WIND POINT LIGHTHOUSE

Built of brick with an inner and outer wall, Wind Point Lighthouse gradually tapers from a diameter of twenty-two feet at its base to twelve feet eight inches at its lantern. The tower stands atop a ten-foot-deep stone foundation and measures 110 feet three inches from its base to the ventilator ball atop its lantern room. The tower features two distinctive architectural embellishments found in many of the tall towers on the Great Lakes: masonry gallery support corbels and arch-topped windows. A spiral cast-iron staircase, with 144 steps and five landings, winds up the inside of the tower to the watchroom and lantern room, which are each encircled by a gallery.

The ten-sided lantern room originally housed a third-order Fresnel lens manufactured by Barbier & Fenestre in Paris, France. This lens, which is now on display at the lighthouse, has twelve flash panels and revolved once in six minutes to produce a six-second flash every thirty seconds. The lens rested atop sixteen ball bearings and was rotated by a clockwork mechanism powered by a weight suspended in a drop tube located between the inner and outer walls of the tower.

Alfred B. Finch, a Civil War veteran, served as the first head keeper at Wind Point, and his son Asa served as the first assistant keeper. The light and fog signal were placed in operation on November 15, 1880, but after just a few days of operation, the revolving machinery for the light malfunctioned, and Alfred and Asa had to manually turn the lens for five frigid nights.

A brick fog signal building was constructed in 1900 to house duplicate, compressed-air sirens powered by oil engines. Two years later, two automatic Brown sirens, with copper trumpets were installed, and one of the two old wooden fog signal buildings was moved to the southwest part of the lot and converted into a woodshed. The characteristic of the fog signal was changed in 1906 from a three-second blast separated by twenty-seven seconds of silence, to a three-second blast separated by fifty-seven seconds of silence.