Egg Rock Light Station, Winter Harbor Maine

Date added: August 01, 2024

Categories:
Maine
Lighthouse

Light Tower/Keeper's House, south and west sides (1992)

Do you have an update on the current status of this structure? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

Egg Rock Light Station, situated on a bold rock island at the entrance to Frenchman Bay, is the only extant complex of this configuration in Maine. It was established in 1875.

The light station on Egg Rock is prominently located in Frenchman Bay between Mount Desert Island to the west and Schoodic Peninsula to the east. Its construction here was undoubtedly in response to the rising maritime traffic in the bay, a large proportion of which was increasingly associated with summer tourism in and around Bar Harbor. The establishment of a steam powered fog signal in 1904 further underlines the importance of the station to local traffic. Egg Rock was automated by the Coast Guard in 1976, and its ancillary buildings, with the exception of the fog signal, were subsequently pulled down.

Site Description

The Egg Rock Light Station has one of the most unusual configurations of extant light complexes in Maine: a square brick tower rises through the center of a one-and-a-half-story square, hip-roofed frame keeper's dwelling. Of the four original ancillary buildings on this site only the rectangular brick fog signal building survives.

Constructed in 1875, the dwelling has a three-bay facade composed of a centrally-located door flanked by window openings (which have since been covered). A long shed-roofed dormer with pent gables at the corners and four openings is attached to the high hip roof on this elevation. This pattern is repeated on the east elevation. Both side walls feature a trio of window openings and coupled gable-roofed dormers. Chimneys punctuate the roof on both of these elevations. The tower stairwell is illuminated by a single window on the west side. A metal railing frames the tower and its octagonal aluminum lantern, a 1986 replacement of the structure that had been removed some years earlier. In 1899 the Annual Report of the LightHouse Board proposed that the dwelling at Egg Rock be enlarged with a half-story addition to the roof. Documentary photographs show that this change radically altered the roof profile from the original shallow hip to a high hip with dormers.

Standing near the southwest corner of the main building is the fog signal house. This one-story building, constructed in 1904, is covered by a gable on hip roof. A door is located in the north end; there are two windows on the west elevation and one at the rear.