Member Profile: David Costenbader

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Natives to Virginia Beach, David and Nadine Costenbader reside at Westminster-Canterbury and love sharing Lynnhaven River and Ocean Park history.

We are lucky to have them as Lynnhaven Oyster Club members!

This article below is recreated by permission: Lynnhaven River Now authored by Mary Reid Barrow.

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The "Party House" that David Costenbader and his friends constructed on the Lynnhaven River was the focal point of a perfect childhood, rarely seen today. Fishing, duck hunting, waterskiing, swimming at the "swimming hole," and especially partying at the Party House were all integral parts of his upbringing in the 50s.

"Our summers were spent on the river," he recalled. "We had boats—it was like heaven—no problems, no crime, no drugs."

If the Lynnhaven Oyster Club could go back in time, "the Party House" would have been a prime location for an on-water event.

A retired commercial real estate agent, David recently reminisced about those golden days at Westminster-Canterbury, where he and his wife Nadine have resided for several years.

In 1952, his family relocated from Norfolk to a house on the Lynnhaven River at the end of Little Neck Road. David was 11, and Virginia Beach Boulevard was a three-lane road.

"There was always something to do, day or night," David mentioned. He and his friends dug clams and trapped muskrats to sell for gas and oil money for the small 25-horsepower motors on their boats.

The concept of the Party House emerged after David and his friend Reese Smith attempted to build a duck blind on the shallow water of a sandbar near his home on the Western Branch across from Witchduck Point.

"We wanted a luxurious blind," David laughed. "But we built it too big to cover with pine."

Duck blinds are concealed with greenery to hide the hunters, and the boys realized it would require too many pine boughs to cover the mansion of a blind they had constructed.

So, David and another friend, Henry Thompson, continued building, adding steps and a rooftop deck. On the first floor, they built a bar, and the party house was born.

"We found an old Coca Cola cooler and placed it under the bar," he said. "It could hold plenty of drinks, a case of beer, whatever you want!"

"We even had a bathroom under the steps," he added, "because we could never get any girls to come out to party without one. Of course, it had direct plumbing."

The party house earned quite a reputation around the river, he noted. But they encountered only one significant problem. One dark night, he climbed up the steps and a snake bit his hand, but they couldn’t see the snake before it fell into the water. He called his father from a nearby house on shore.

There was no hospital in Virginia Beach then, only a clinic. His father contacted the police to inform them he was heading to the Norfolk hospital with a snake bite victim. Motorcycle police met them on Virginia Beach Boulevard and sped ahead, leading them into town!

When they arrived in Norfolk, David had not reacted to the bite, and the doctor determined it wasn’t a poisonous snake bite. He sent David home with a tetanus shot.

The era of the Party House concluded when David and his friends graduated from college and weren’t around much to enjoy it. "We had grown up and realized that someone might get hurt fooling around on the old structure," he said.

The guys first notified the fire department to warn them of a harmless fire on the river. "Then we poured gasoline on it and burned it up in a bonfire," David explained. The Party House went out in a blaze of glory, but the memories linger. "We couldn’t have had a more ideal place to grow up," he said.

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LOC does not have access to anything as cool as David's original Lynnhaven River party house, but our members can appreciate a parallel experience - spending social time on the river with friends. Members were rewarded in the fall of 2025 for the Club's annual on-water event.