Point Gratiot Lighthouse, Dunkirk New York

Date added: September 02, 2023 Categories:

Erected in 1875, the Point Gratiot Lighthouse replaced an earlier lighthouse built in 1826. For over 175 years, a light at this point has played an important role in Great Lakes navigation. As a coastal light, it was for nineteenth-century shipmasters the most conspicuous light on the southern shore of Lake Erie; as a harbor light, it guided vessels through the difficult approach to Dunkirk harbor which twice in its history seemed destined to become the major lake port in New York.

Dunkirk's excellent harbor, the largest after Buffalo on the New York coast of Lake Erie, made it highly considered as possible terminus of the Erie Canal. But in 1823 the decision was made to end the canal at Buffalo where the most rapid economic growth resulted. The early lighthouse, though not guiding the volume of commercial traffic for which Dunkirk had hoped, served many fishing boats which made Dunkirk their home port.

In 1852, Dunkirk received a second chance to become a principal transportation center, for in that year the Erie Railroad completed its western terminus there. When President Fillmore came to dedicate the railroad, the area's future seemed bright. But once again Dunkirk lost to Buffalo, for the terminus was eventually moved to the larger city. The Dunkirk harbor, nonetheless, continued to handle a brisk lake traffic as industries and smaller railroads from the south and east came to the city. Dunkirk became the chief port facility for the Southern Tier, a rich agricultural region.

Dunkirk benefited from the sharp stimulus to industrial growth brought about by the Civil War. In the 1860s and 1870s, many factories located there, including manufacturers of locomotives, machinery, doors and bricks. In 1875, in order to better accommodate the demands these industries and the abundant agricultural produce of the region were making on shipping, the lighthouse that had been erected in 1826 and rebuilt in 1857 was torn down and replaced by the present structure and its surrounding buildings. The keeper's dwelling is a fine example of vernacular high Victorian Gothic architecture. The Fresnel lens that had been installed in the older tower in 1857 was transferred to the new structure, which was placed in service in July 1876. In that year, E. C. Hussey, in his book Home Building...New York to San Francisco, called national attention to Dunkirk's harbor which he praised as "safe and commodious." Noting that the port "commands a large amount of lake traffic," Hussey observed that Dunkirk "enjoys the advantage of being able to open to navigation some weeks earlier in the spring than Buffalo, on account of the ice being driven down the lake by the high winds of that service"

The Point Gratiot Lighthouse, which still guides a diminished volume of lake and harbor traffic, continues a long and venerable tradition of service to inland navigation.

Site Description

The Point Gratiot Lighthouse stands in picturesque isolation on the point of high land that juts northward into Lake Erie at the southwestern end of Dunkirk harbor. The complex includes a sixty-one-foot tall stone tower, a two-story red brick keeper's dwelling, a metal oil house near to the tower, and a wooden barn close to the entrance to the grounds. The entrance to the site is marked by a masonry gatepost in the form of a lighthouse.

The square tower, which encases a brick core, is built of reddish-gray stone laid in rock face ashlar with quoins of the same material. Above a high base level, the shaft diminishes in width and is painted white. Surmounting the tower is a ten-sided gray metal lantern resting on a circular base and covered by a red dome-like roof. Inside the lantern, the light is mounted in a fixed position facing the lake. An iron railing runs around the square top of the tower, forming a parapet around the lantern's base from which a door in the north side opens to the outside.

The keeper's dwelling is a fine example of vernacular High Victorian Gothic. Dated 1875 above the main portal, the house was erected on the south side of the tower to which it is joined by a brick passageway. The house is raised on a rusticated stone base which is continued in the walls of the passageway and in the lower portion of the tower, thereby visually uniting all three units of the design. The symmetrical five-bay facade of the house faces south, away from the tower. A white wooden porch with molded and turned structural members shelters the principal entrance which is centered in the facade and is reached by a short flight of steps. Three dormers, aligned with the spaces between the ground floor windows, interrupt the gray slate gable roof. Two molded brick chimneys, centered above the outer dormers, rise through the ridge of the roof. The northern elevation also consists of five bays and three dormers (which are identical in size and design to those on the south side). All dormer heads retain their original wooden king post braces, boarding and apex finials. Braces and boarding, as well as brackets, were also present on the gable ends of the roof, however, all but the finial is gone from the west gable, - On the west side, two windows in each floor are symmetrically disposed. On the east elevation, symmetry is broken by the presence of a first-floor doorway that is placed slightly to the right of center. Further to the right of this doorway (which leads to the kitchen), a slender window deviates from alignment with the typical six-over-six window above it in the second floor. The passageway to the tower also has a door on the east side.

All doors and windows on the keeper's dwelling have flat stone lintels and sills, and all wood trim on the building is painted white. The wooden shutters which appear in old photographs of the house have been removed.

Otherwise, with the exception of the green fiberglass panels attached to the front porch and the decorative features referred to as missing from the west gable, the exterior is virtually unchanged from the nineteenth century.

The plan of the keeper's dwelling is organized around a central wainscotted hall which contains the main staircase. The straight flight of steps terminates in a handsome Victorian newel post of dark and light inlaid woods. The four principal rooms of the first floor are grouped symmetrically on either side of the central hall.

The former living room and parlor on the front (south side) of the house retain their original marble mantels and molded baseboards and door frames although modern ceilings have been installed and in the east room, modern wooden paneling covers the walls.

The upper floor contains several bedrooms opening off of a central hall. Both the attic and the basement, which preserves a rainwater cistern, are unfinished.

At the opposite end of the central hall from the vestibule, a doorway opens into the covered passageway leading to the tower. The passageway, lit by two windows on the west side, also serves as an office for the present part-time lightkeeper. From the north end of the passageway, one enters directly into the base of the tower. (This is the only entrance to the tower.) Access to the lantern is by a circular cast-iron stairway, which also serves as a lightning conductor. In the lantern, the three-panel lens that was initially installed in the former tower in 1857 is in place and functioning, having long since been electrified. Engraved on the brass frame of the lens, which is a third-order Fresnel type, is the inscription: "Henri Le Paute, Paris."

About thirty feet to the northwest of the tower stands a metal oil house, which was used to store the kerosene formerly needed to fuel the light. It is a tall square structure approximately ten feet wide by twenty-five feet high with walls and roof of sheet iron riveted together and painted red. A ventilation stack at the top crowns the pyramidal roof.

The barn on the southern side of the property is a white wooden structure typical of its class of building. Today it is used as a storage shed.

The original 1826 light tower and keeper's dwelling (which were not connected) stood some distance to the east of the present structures.

Nothing of these buildings remains above ground.

Although exhibiting no evidence of a planned landscape scheme, the lighthouse grounds possess a number of fine trees. These are grouped primarily on the south and east sides of the house and tower. Many wild shrubs and trees grow along the high banks of the lake on the northern edge of the property. Inland to the south of the lighthouse site is Point Gratiot Park, which is owned by the city of Dunkirk. The area bordering the park is a modest residential neighborhood. Looking east from the tower back toward Dunkirk, one sees, several hundred yards distant, the large Niagara Mohawk power station which stands between the lighthouse and the present-day harbor. The inward-curving shoreline between the tower and the power plant forms a small beach in the vicinity of the lighthouse. The open waters of the lake lie to the north, northwest and northeast of the lighthouse.