Overview

Fay & Bowen launches and runabouts are the slim, glistening, brass-bejeweled ladies that still slide over the waters of the Adirondacks with the poise of socialites arriving at the opera. Since 1901, Fay & Bowen boats have been as linked to the Adirondacks and their mountain lakes as the region’s ubiquitous guide-boats.

Few of the Great Camps were without one or two; Lake George alone had three Fay & Bowen dealerships; and the list of Fay & Bowen owners in the 1920s reads like a Who’s Who of prominent Americans from Victor Herbert to the Uihlein family, brewers of Schlitz beer. The enterprise that Mr. Fay and Mr. Bowen started in 1895 as manufacturers of bicycle parts in Auburn, N.Y., and moved to Geneva, N.Y., in 1904 after switching to marine engines and boats, seems to have been a straightforward and uncomplicated company. And it seems to have consistently done a couple of things very well. It built engines and gentleman’s launches and it sold them successfully through a large dealer network. It didn’t have the flash or energy of powerful personalities that often stood behind the other powerboat builders of its era. It lacked a lucky Chris Smith, an aggressive Gar Wood, an artistic John Hacker, a wealthy Horace Dodge. Compared to its competitors, Fay & Bowen was staid, small-town, uncompromising in its devotion to a first-quality product and a style of boat and boating that finally couldn’t compete with the speedboats of the 1920s.