Doubling Point Light Station, Bath Maine

Date added: November 14, 2024

Categories:
Maine
Lighthouse

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The Doubling Point Light Station is situated on the west side of Arrowsic Island in the Kennebec River. Northernmost of the four-station system erected in 1898 on this important river.

In 1892, the Annual Report of the Light-House Board carried a lengthy statement of the need for light and fog signals in the Kennebec River. Gateway to the important harbor at Bath and the upriver communities of Gardiner, Hallowell and the state capitol at Augusta, the Kennebec River carried the traffic of 3,137 vessels in 1891 excluding daily passenger steamers. Based on these statistics the Light-House Board requested appropriations for lights at Doubling Point, Squirrel Point, Perkins Island, and a set of range lights. It was not until 1895, however, that Congress appropriated the $17,000 needed for construction. In 1898 the system was completed and put into operation. Doubling Point light continues to provide an aid to navigation.

The Lighthouse was automated in 1990.

Site Description

Like the other Kennebec River lights built at the turn of the nineteenth century, Doubling Point Light Station consists of an octagonal wooden frame tower, a detached keeper's dwelling, a shed, and a brick oil house. The light tower, which stands offshore on a square granite base, is linked to the mainland by means of a three-span wooden truss foot-bridge.

Erected in 1898, the tower is a tapered octagonal structure covered in wood shingles. A wooden walkway rings the tower off of which a door opens into the interior workroom. There is a single window in the north face and the bell support apparatus on the west side. A ladder rises to the bracketed iron walkway that is located below the octagonal lantern. Three granite piers support the foot-bridge, The tower was reoriented in 1899 but the original location is not known.

Doubling Point's dwelling house is a one-and-a-half-story L-shaped building sheathed in clapboards. Like the tower, it was erected in 1898. The leg of the L plan faces west toward the river. It has an asymmetrical fenestration pattern of three windows and is flanked by short hip-roofed porches that shelter doors. The main block has a pair of windows on both gable ends. In 1901 the dwelling was moved to a point nearer the tower.

Standing near the house is a small gable roofed frame shed. It was built in 1898.

The brick oil house, which was added to the complex in 1906, is a typical small gable-roofed building with a door and vent in one end.