Clayton Ship & Boat Building
Clayton NY
This shipyard is a bit of a mystery. Can anyone tell me who owned it, when it opened, when it closed? It was located, I think, on Theresa Street, where the marina is now.
The Clayton Casino, once a ship-building factory, was on the corner of Mary and Theresa Streets. Popular during the big band era for dances and entertainment, it was later a bowling alley. The building was razed in 2007.
Touted as the “biggest nightclub between Montreal and Chicago,” by Clayton resident Marilyn Hutchinson in a 2008 Watertown Daily Times article, the Clayton Casino hosted numerous popular musicians, including Timmy and Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller and Paul Whiteman, in its heyday in the 1930s. It was “seven-days-a-week live entertainment,” Ms. Hutchinson said.
The popular nightclub, which was never a gambling sight, only enjoyed six to seven years of business before closing permanently in 1942 as traffic declined during World War II. The building, which was demolished in May 2008 with the idea that it would serve as a parking lot for a hotel that never came to fruition, originally housed Clayton Ship & Boat Building Corp., which manufactured 110-foot-long submarine chasers during World War I. It later became Frye and Denny Boatworks. In 1934, just after the 21st Amendment ended 13 years of Prohibition, Stewart and Mary Ormsby, of Belleville, and Westman LaLonde purchased the building and transformed it into the casino.
https://www.nny360.com/magazines/nnybusiness/features/the-day-the-music-died-no-gambling-at-the-clayton-casino-just-a-place-for/article_db485221-ef95-58c4-9b32-b23203fc34a4.html
O/N | Customer | Type | Tons | LOA | Delivered | Notes | ||
YC-577 | US Navy | open lighter | 115 | 1918 | ||||
YC-578 | US Navy | open lighter | 115 | 1918 | ||||
YC-579 | US Navy | open lighter | 115 | 1918 | ||||
220283 | SC-411 | US Navy | subchaser | 135 | 110 | May 1919 | sold 1920 as Brunette, Sentinel, Romance | |
SC-412 | US Navy | subchaser | 135 | 110 | May 1919 | to MARAD 1946 | ||
YT-53 | US Navy | tugboat | 215 | 1919 | sold in the 1920s | |||
YT-54 | US Navy | tugboat | 215 | 1919 | sold in the 1920s | |||
YT-55 | US Navy | tugboat | 215 | 1919 | sold in the 1920s | |||
256588 | Spray V | passenger | 10 | 50 | 1920 | |||
220297 | Just Brown II | passenger | 40 | 63 | 1920 | later Maxine II, Uncle Sam II | ||
223698 | Edith | passenger | 14 | 60 | 1924 | |||
223734 | Miss Clayton | passenger | 25 | 64 | 1924 | |||
223787 | Any Where | passenger | 23 | 48 | 1924 | |||
224707 | Islander II | passenger | 15 | 48 | 1925 | later Spray VI | ||
226377 | Miss Clayton II | passenger | 15 | 48 | 1927 | |||
228324 | Miss St. Lawrence II | passenger | 8 | 43 | 1929 | |||
229789 | Julia III | passenger | 10 | 47 | 1930 | later Island Princess | ||
237410 | Miss Islander II | passenger | 12 | 62 | 1938 | later Uncle Sam II |