Colchester Reef Light - Architecture

Architecture

This lighthouse was one of a group of New England lighthouses built to the same plan. Nearly identical lighthouses were constructed at Sabin Point, Pomham Rocks, and Rose Island.

In the mid-nineteenth century, due in large part to the booming lumber business, which relied on easy shipping of raw timber from Canada to planing mills in western Vermont, commerce on Lake Champlain significantly increased. To protect ships in potentially hazardous waterways, the Lighthouse Service held a national competition for lighthouse designs, and Albert R. Dow, a Burlington native from the University of Vermont, won the commission. The Lighthouse Service implemented Dow’s designs in building the Colchester Reef Lighthouse, which marked the reef consisting of several groups of exposed rocks northwest of Colchester Point. It was completed in 1871.

Because the lighthouse needed to endure the lake’s strong winds and heavy winter ice-floes, Dow pegged and bolted together the lighthouse’s twenty-five-foot square stone foundation, post-and-beam frame and tower, and slate and tin roof. Dow then secured the entire building with one and a half inch thick iron rods to assure its stability. Despite Dow’s focus on the building’s framework, he ornamented his lighthouse with a mansard roof and scrolled window frames typical of the then-fashionable French Second Empire style. A sixth order Fresnel lens exhibited a fixed red light beginning in 1871.