Club alternated their playing seasons between New York and Rhode Island before making Newport their permanent home. The Meadowbrook Polo Club is among the most historic polo clubs in the United States with its roots dating back to 1877 when Thomas Hitchcock Sr., Oliver W. Bird, August Belmont, Benjamin Nicoll, and their associates participated in the first polo match on Long Island. The polo match was played on the infield of the racetrack of the Mineola Fair Grounds. The Meadowbrook Polo Club, originally located in East Meadow and Jericho and currently located in Old Westbury, was formally incorporated in 1881. The Meadowbrook Polo Club's first polo field was created in 1884, leading to Long Island's role as "Polo Capital of the World" during the 1920s and 1930s. Besides Meadowbrook other polo clubs in the area include: Equuleus Polo Club, Shannon Hill Polo Club, Greenwich Polo Club, Princeton University Polo, Fairfield County Hunt Club, North Fork Polo Club. The Rockaway Hunting Club and Piping Rock Club are country clubs with polo fields and golf courses on Long Island. Rowing During the 19th century professional rowing (a.k.a. "crew" in America) was the most popular sport in the nation, and the waters around New York City were home to some of the most successful and popular competitors at the time. Amateurs also proliferated the area, and remain successful and influential in the sport, though professional rowing has been banned nationally for over a century because of corruption. Both college teams and clubs ply the traditionally popular Harlem River and other waters around the city. The Harlem River was the traditional rowing course for New York, analogous to the Charles River in Boston and the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. On the Harlem's banks is the boathouse for the Columbia University crew, and the river is the home course for the university's crew. Since 1952, a large flat rock face, called the "(Big) C Rock" has been painted with Columbia's varsity "C". The river is used by crews from New York University, Fordham University, and Manhattan College, though the only university with permanent facilities currently on the river is Columbia. Formerly, a number of boathouses lined the Sherman Creek inlet off the river, but each was destroyed by suspected arson over the course of the 1970s. The last boathouse before the 1990's Peter Jay Sharp Boathouse to be on the creek was the Fordham Boathouse,