Hendricks Head Light Station, West Southport Maine

Date added: September 01, 2024

Categories:
Maine
Lighthouse

West and north sides of keeper's house, light tower, and shed (1989)

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The Hendricks Head Light Station is located behind a shallow rock ledge on the east side of the mouth of the Sheepscot River.

The light station at Hendricks Head was established in 1829 as a guide to Sheepscot River and the important harbor at Wiscasset. Incorporated in 1802, Wiscasset enjoyed a brief period of prosperity in the early nineteenth century resulting in large part from shipbuilding activities at its deep sheltered harbor and maritime commerce. Its sister settlements on the Sheepscot, including Southport, Cape Newagen and Hendricks Head, were also keenly dependent on the local fishing industry and later in the century on tourism.

Hendricks Head Light Station is composed of a square tapered brick light tower connected to a large two-story keeper's house by way of a covered passageway. A second walkway leads to the bell tower and a frame shed and brick oil house stand to the northwest of the house. The present complex replaces the original 1829 structure that employed a rubble stone dwelling surmounted by a lantern.

The light tower and keeper's house, built in 1875, is similar in form to others built in Maine during the 1870s. A door, sheltered by the wood-shingled covered passage, punctuates the north elevation below a six-over-six window. A second window is located on the tower's south side. The tower is capped by an iron deck with a railing. At the center of this deck is the octagonal lantern whose conical roof is crowned by a spherical ventilator. The covered walkway extends to a much longer passageway which at one end meets the house and at the other end is connected to the tapered bell that was built in 1890. The latter is supported by four iron posts and originally had a pyramidal skeletal frame.

Sheathed in wood shingles, the T-shaped keeper's house has an enclosed hip-roofed porch carrying across its west elevation below two windows in the second story and one in the attic. Both gable ends of the main block, whose facade faces east, contain two six-over-six double-hung sash windows on each story and a smaller attic window. A narrow shed-roofed vestibule shelters a door located between the first-story windows on the north elevation. Documentary photographs of the house show that the present two-story ell was enlarged from a one-story structure covered by a hip roof. At the time that this alteration was made, the second-floor fenestration pattern in the north and south gable ends was changed from a single large window with sidelights to the present pair of openings. These photographs also show that the house and passageways were originally covered in clapboards.

Standing to the north of the dwelling is the rectangular frame shed. It is covered in clapboards. Alterations include the addition of a shed roofed dormer on the south side and a brick flue. There are a pair of windows on the west gable end, a pair of doors on the south side and two windows and a large opening on the north elevation.

The brick oil house, built here in 1895, consists of a narrow door located in one gable end and a ridge ventilator. This particular configuration is typical of 1890s oil houses at Maine light stations.

when constructed in 1829, the light station consisted of a low one-and-a-half-story rubble stone cottage that was three bays in width. Mounted atop one end of the gable ridge was the polygonal tower. In 1875 this structure was pulled down and replaced by the present brick tower and frame keeper's house.

The light was discontinued in 1933 and sold to W. Prichard and Mary L. Browne in 1935. In 1951 the Coast Guard recommissioned the light but the buildings remain in private ownership.