Bear Island Light Station, Northeast Harbor Maine
Bear Island Light Station was established in 1839 as a guide to Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island. It is prominently located at the summit and western end of Bear Island.
The first complex built at Bear Island in 1839 employed a stone dwelling surmounted by a lantern. In 1852, a brick tower was erected off one end of the dwelling, and in 1889 the entire complex was pulled down and rebuilt.
Sited above a bold rock ledge, Bear Island Light Station is composed of a squat tower with an attached workroom; a detached, frame gambrel roofed keeper's house; a barn; a diminutive stone oil house; and a boathouse. Now part of Acadia National Park, this light station no longer serves as an aid to navigation.
The light tower is constructed of brick and has a slightly tapered configuration. A pair of small window openings in the shaft provide interior illumination. Its polygonal lantern, which no longer shelters a beacon, is framed by a relatively wide circular parapet that is supported by iron brackets and bordered by a railing. The attached ancillary brick building has a single window on both side walls and a door in the gable end. This tower and workroom date to 1889 when the entire station was rebuilt.
A short distance to the northeast of the tower is the one-and-a-half-story keeper's quarters. The rectangular dwelling is sheathed in clapboards and wood shingles in the gambrel ends. Its three-bay front elevation is symmetrically composed with a central door flanked by window openings (since boarded over). Two small dormers punctuate the roof and a pair of brick flues rise through the ridge. There are four windows on both ends; two on each story. A small shed-roofed addition with three windows and a door is attached to the rear. Above it is another dormer. The present dwelling replaces the original one-and-a-half-story stone building and its low one-story frame ell.
Some distance to the northeast of the tower and the house is the rectangular frame barn. It has a pair of windows on its east gable end and a door on the south elevation.
The small stone oil house is located to the southwest of the barn. It was constructed in 1905 and has a typical twentieth-century configuration with its vent and door located in one gable end.
Standing to the northwest of the tower is the boathouse and slip. The gable-roofed frame building was constructed in 1905. It is sheathed in wood shingles, has a shed addition at the rear, and a replacement paneled door over the slip.
View from northwest (1987)
View from south (1987)
View from west (1987)
