A great deal of industry goes on at the IYRS campus, but when you walk into Restoration Hall, you won’t smell toxic chemicals or resins.  You’ll smell cedar shavings and see shipwrights-in-training learning their craft as they restore wooden boats by hand—the same way these watercraft were originally built decades ago, in coastal regions where boatbuilding was a way of life.

Located at 449 Thames Street on a 2.5-acre waterfront campus, IYRS is a non-profit educational institution that teaches the skills, history, art and science of building, restoring and maintaining boats and their systems. The school offers two full-time certificate programs to train people for careers in the marine industry–a two-year program in yacht restoration and a one-year program in marine systems. IYRS also offers a Continuing Education program with evening and weekend courses in woodworking, marine systems, welding and marine applications.

The campus is open year-round and it is free to visitors. Every fall, the boats to be restored by the students are placed inside Restoration Hall, a 1903 electric generating plan now serving as the student workshop. The boats are all historically important watercrafts donated to the school—and they are all broken and derelict. Students learn their trade while restoring these classics, learning to build boats the way they were once built, before the days of mass production.