Perkins Island Light Station, Georgetown Maine

Date added: September 26, 2024

Categories:
Maine
Lighthouse

Light Tower and Keeper'S House, South and West Sides (1989)

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Occupying a bold rock ledge on the west side of Perkins Island, the Perkins Island Light Station is the southernmost of the four stations erected in 1898 along the Kennebec River.

The Perkins Island Light Station, like its sister lights, was built in response to the need for Federally operated and maintained aids to navigation along this important commercial waterway. In its Annual Report of 1892, the Lighthouse Board described the nature and amount of traffic on the Kennebec and requested funding for the construction of four stations. Congressional action was delayed on the request until 1895 when $17,000 was appropriated for the undertaking. In 1898 the system was completed and placed in operation. The station was automated in 1959 and the buildings transferred to the State of Maine in the 1960s.

Site Description

Situated along the east bank of the Kennebec River, the Perkins Island Light Station is composed of a tapered octagonal frame light tower, a two-story L-shaped keeper's house, a pyramidal bell tower, a brick oil house, and a detached barn. The buildings stand on a rock ledge.

Like the tower erected upriver at Squirrel Point Light Station, the Perkins Island light, which was built in 1898, is a short (seventeen feet from base to center of the lantern) frame structure sheathed in wood shingles. It rests on a stone foundation. A door located on the east elevation opens into the tower and the interior stair. This leads to a wooden exterior gallery added in 1899 that is supported by brackets and located below the lantern. The eight large red panes of glass in the lantern are capped by an octagonal roof surmounted by a spherical ventilator.

Standing to the south of the tower is the dwelling, also constructed in 1898. Covered in wood shingles, the house's two-story ell faces the river. It extends from the southwest corner of the main block and is flanked by a screened hip roofed porch on the north side and a one-room hip roofed shed with an engaged porch on the south elevation. There are three window openings (all boarded shut) in the ell's west gable and, a window in the south end of the main block and a trio of windows in the north gable end. Additional openings are located on the east elevation. A brick flue rises through the roof at the intersection of the ridges.

To the north of the house is the small wood shingled barn with its attached shed. It has a gable roof and was built in 1898.

The pyramidal frame bell tower stands to the south. Although somewhat deteriorated, it is nevertheless one of the few extant examples of the type in Maine. It was erected in 1902.

Like many of its contemporaries, the oil house is a small gable roofed brick building with a door and vent in one end and a slate roof. It was erected in 1906.