Rock Island Light Station, Fishers Landing New York

Date added: September 07, 2024

Categories:
New York
Lighthouse

Keeper's House, Generator House, and Lighthouse (1977)

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Between 1822 and 1848 light stations were erected by the federal government along the St. Lawrence River in northern New York at Oswegatchie (Ogdensburg, ca. 1822), Tibbit's Point (1827), Crossover Island (1838), Sunken Rock (1848), Rock Island (1847), and Blind Bay (ca. 1845). Of these six lights which comprised the "St Lawrence String", only Rock Island retains both its tower and auxiliary structures, all of which possess substantial architectural integrity.

Built in 1882, the Rock Island Lighthouse, classified as a sixth-order, fixed white light, replaced the combination lighthouse/keeper's house of 1847. The fieldstone smokehouse, now used to store flammable materials, is the only structure to have survived from the earlier period of occupation. These two buildings, along with the generator house (1900), boathouse (1920), carpenter's shop (1882), and keeper's house (1882), comprise the only surviving complete lighthouse complex on the St. Lawrence River in northern New York.

The lighthouse indicated safe channels, harbor inlets, and navigation hazards, while its secondary structures provided for the shelter and supportive function of the light, its keeper, and his family. As such, this isolated, self-contained station represents a microcosm of maritime life on the river during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The Rock Island Light Station is a type of facility that is rapidly disappearing with improvements to navigation. The Rock Island facility is presently owned by the State of New York. Though it has been removed from active service, Rock Island Light Station is maintained as an example of the self-sufficient facilities once common along the St. Lawrence River.

Site Description

The Rock Island Light Station complex is comprised of six buildings: lighthouse (1882), keeper's house (1882), boat house (c.1920), carpenter's shop (1882), generator house (c.1900), smokehouse/storage (c.1847). These buildings are the only structures on Rock Island, a four-acre outcropping in the St. Lawrence River lying northwest of the village of Fisher's Landing in the town of Orleans, Jefferson County, New York.

Built in 1882 to replace an earlier and more primitive lantern of 1847, the Rock Island Lighthouse was the major structural component of a complete light station complex. The tower lens was classified as a sixth-order fixed white light. According to a contract issued by the Secretary of the Treasury on October 6^th, 1881, the forty-foot tower is mounted on

a fifteen-foot diameter, concrete encased, masonry base which rises ten feet from the river's rock bed to mean water level. Connected to Rock Island by a forty-foot pier constructed of concrete-covered masonry rubble, the tapering tower rises fifty feet. The upper portion is constructed of dressed limestone sealed with a thick cover of white, painted plaster inside and out. The ten-foot high steel light is surrounded by a deck and balustrade, and surmounted by an octagonal, plate steel roof with spherical finial. A paneled door provides entrance on the south side of the tower. Above the door at the second and third-story levels are windows; the fourth level is characterized by portholes oriented north, east, south and west. The third level window has a round-headed, double-hung sash covered by a simple, pedimented canopy. The deck is supported by ten C-scrolled iron brackets lagged to the masonry of the upper tower. Access to the light is provided by means of a four-story circular iron stair. The light, electrified since the 1880's, was powered by a petroleum-fueled generator located a few feet southwest of the tower. The light and its Fresnel intensifiers were removed in the 1940's. The structure today is as it was when built in 1882, except for the removal of the light and minor repairs to the masonry and plaster.

Built in 1882, the two-and-a-half-story, eight-room, frame keeper's house rises from its dressed limestone foundation behind a breakwater/ retaining wall of the same material. Typical of substantial suburban and village homes of the 1880s, this "Shingle style" house manifests the familiar juxtaposition of gables and large expanses of steep-pitched cedar shingled roof. All windows are double-hung, sixteen over two sash, except for the triple window of the kitchen at the southwest. The only instance of applied architectural ornament is the addition of simple, curved brackets below the cornice at each side of the posts of the large, three-bay north porch. A one-room wood house extends twenty feet to the rear from the southwest corner of the house. The simple, spacious interiors, with plaster walls over sawn lath, were heated by four woodburning fireplaces and a kitchen stove.

The fully enclosed, ten-foot square generator house is built of riveted steel plates, with a low pitched pyramidal roof capped by a circular ventilating cupola. This auxiliary structure stands on a concrete base at the island's edge between the lighthouse and the keeper's house. The electrical conduit between the generator and the light passed below ground to the masonry pier, then through it to the tower base and up the tower's interior wall to the light.

Located on the northeast tip of Rock Island is the frame and clapboard carpenter's shop. Characterized by decorative, cut-shingle gable ends, it is another of the buildings erected on the Island in 1882. Its materials and structural system are the same as those of the keeper's house. This small one and a-half-story building served the keeper and his family as work shop, storage building and auxiliary wood house. Each gable has a single window with double-hung sash above and a single window or door below.

Between the keeper's house and carpenter's shop is the whitewashed, shingle roofed, fieldstone smokehouse, now used as storage for flammable materials. Measuring four by six feet, and about five feet high, this small structure displays little late nineteenth-century machine or tool craftsmanship, thus appearing to date from 1847 when the earliest combination lighthouse and keeper's house was placed on Rock Island.

Located on the back or south side of Rock Island, facing Fisher's Landing, is the boathouse with its concrete dock. Built about 1920, this two-story, balloon frame, clapboard structure measures about twenty by forty feet. It appears to have had multiple purposes. At the water level on the east half is the slip; at ground level on the west half is a stable for a cow, and a small entrance room with loft over the entire second floor was used for storage.

The six buildings on Rock Island provided shelter and supportive functions for the light, its keeper and his family, at an isolated, self-contained light station complex.