Tenants Harbor Lighthouse and Station, Tenants Harbor Maine
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- Maine
- Lighthouse
Tenants Harbor Light Station is composed of a cylindrical brick light tower connected to a one-and-a-half-story keeper's house and detached shed, oil house and replica bell house.
The light station at Tenants Harbor was established in 1857 in a continued effort to provide aids to navigation along the coast of Maine. Its location on the eastern side of Southern Island placed the complex at a strategic position, enabling it to guide ships through the two entrances to Tenants Harbor. The village of Tenants Harbor is the largest community in the Town of St. George, and is located at the head of a long harbor. The light station continues to emphasize the maritime heritage of the area where an active shipbuilding industry produced more than seventy schooners between 1820 and 1870. Many of these vessels were used to convey ice, stone, lime, and lumber from numerous places such as the nearby granite quarries at Long Cove and Clark's Island.
In 1933 the light station at Tenants Harbor was decommissioned and sold to a private individual.
Site Description
The Tenants Harbor Light Station occupies a shallow plateau located on the east side of the Southern Island and at the approach to Tenants Harbor. A bold rock ledge rings the island and a low rock wall frames three of the four components of the complex. The station is composed of a one-and-a-half-story wooden frame keeper's house joined to a circular brick tower, a detached shed, an oil house, and a pyramidal bell house (not the original structure at this site).
The tower and keeper's house at Tenants Harbor was built in 1857. Rising to a height of just over twenty-seven feet from its base to the center of the lantern, the cylindrical brick tower is punctuated by a pair of small windows on opposing sides and capped by an iron deck and railing. The ten-sided lantern is covered by a shallow roof with a spherical ventilator. A narrow brick workroom links the tower with the dwelling.
Like each of its contemporaries, the keeper's house has not retained its original, board-and-batten siding. Now sheathed in clapboards, the dwelling features a pair of twentieth-century gable-roofed dormers and an original, gabled vestibule on the front (north) elevation. A pair of windows are located to the east of this vestibule. The short one-story wing attached to the west end of the house is an 1887 addition. This elevation also contains a later brick chimney and flue.
The date of construction of the shed is not positively known. An 1895 reference in the Annual Report of the Light-House Board refers to the construction of a fuel house but whether that building is the present shed cannot be determined. The frame building is sheathed in wood shingles and clapboards and its walls are punctuated by a variety of door and window openings.
Constructed in 1906, the oil house is a diminutive gable-roofed brick building. It has a door and a narrow rectangular ventilator in its west gable end.
Although a bell house was historically a feature of this light station, the existing pyramidal structure was built by a later owner. It is sheathed in wood shingles and ringed on four sides by a walkway.
