The building in front of you is the powerhouse. Inside the large double doors to your right were the engines and dynamos used to produce electrical power to light the lamp for the 1898 south tower Fresnel lens. This brick building, built in 1909, replaced a temporary wooden structure.
The noise from the engines housed inside was incredibly loud. Local residents complained about this and also about the intensity of light coming from the south tower. Blackout panels were installed on the landward side of the south tower, but nothing could be done about the noise.
In 1917, the machinery needed costly repairs. The Light House Board decided not to repair it, but instead replaced the electric lamp with an incandescent oil vapor lamp that was used until 1924 when commercial electrical power became available. The original machinery was removed in 1921, broken up and discarded because it was no longer needed.
Today the powerhouse is used as an exhibit building to display Twin Lights' famous south tower Fresnel lens.
[Second Marker]
Electric Power Station
Twin Lights was the first primary seacoast light in the United States to use electricity. This building contained equipment for generating electric power for the light which produced 25,000,000 candlepower, by far the most powerful in United States.
This building, completed in 1909, replaced an earlier wood structure built in 1898.
Comments 0 comments