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Boston Harbor’s 97-acre Spectacle Island, which received its name for its resemblance to a pair of eyeglasses when seen from the air, has a long and sometimes sordid past. Often overlooked in accounts of the island’s history is the fact that it was once home to two working pairs of lighthouses.
For hundreds of years Native Americans came to the island to fish and gather clams. The island served as a quarantine station for a time beginning in 1729. All immigrants coming from Ireland were detained in case of smallpox. Two summer hotels built on the island enjoyed success for a while, but illegal activities led to a police raid in 1857. A plant for the rendering of dead horses and cattle began a few years later, then a garbage reclaiming plant, where trash was burned for oil, was opened.
The island also served as a dump for the City of Boston until 1959. The landfill added many acres to the island and changed its shape over the years. Billie Hargreaves, whose father was the supervisor of the landfill, has said that her family had dogs and cats to help control the huge rat population. The children were taught to shoot the rats, and they kept a running score of who had shot the most.
The 1892 report of the Lighthouse Board made a strong case for the building of two range lighthouses on Spectacle Island:
“Boston is one of the most important commercial cities in the country. Its harbor is without sufficient aids to navigation. Among those needed are range beacons on Spectacle Island to mark the center of the dredged channel from State Ledge toward the city and to mark the turning point into the channel for vessels coming up from Nix’s Mate.”
In 1895 $9,350 was appropriated for the new range light station. A Lighthouse Board Notice was issued in June 1897:
“On May 20 a fixed red reflector light was established in each of the two towers recently erected on the north side and easterly point of the northerly part of Spectacle Island, south side of President Roads, Boston Harbor. Each tower is a white, octagonal, pyramidal, shingled structure with a small window on the northwesterly side, from which the light is shown. The focal plane of the front light is 29 feet above the water and 13.3 feet above the base of the tower, and of the rear light 54 feet above the water and 23 feet above the base of the tower. The rear tower stands 379 feet SE. 1/2 S. in rear of the front tower. ...The lights mark a range line to guide NW. 1/2 N. from the line marked by the South Boston Range Lights up the main channel to Boston.”
Records show that Winfield L. Creed was the first keeper beginning in May 1897, and he stayed at Spectacle Island until 1926.
In 1902, according to the annual reports of the Lighthouse Board, new pairs of range lights were authorized both on Lovell’s Island and Spectacle Island in Boston Harbor. The addition of a second pair of range lights made Spectacle Island home to four working lighthouses, which was certainly unusual for an island of its size. $13,000 was appropriated for the new Spectacle Island beacons, and they were built in the spring of 1903 and first lighted on April 10th of that year.
These new range lights, together with the Lovell’s Island Range Lights, guided vessels through the new Broad Sound Channel which connected with the President Roads shipping channel. The 1903 lights on Spectacle Island were called the Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights. The new lighthouses were located very close to the 1897 range lights on the northeast part of the island.
The two wooden towers were 337 feet apart, and they both held fourth order Fresnel lenses manufactured by the Chance Brothers in Birmingham, England. The front light was 53 feet above the water and flashed white every five seconds. The rear light was 70 feet above the water and displayed a fixed red light, produced by a red chimney over the lens. The towers were apparently painted red initially; the 1904 report of the Lighthouse Board reported that the color had been changed from red to white.
Also in 1904, the 1897 range light towers were moved about 15 feet to the south and placed on new masonry foundations. The towers’ colors were changed to white on their lower thirds, red on their middle thirds, and white on their upper thirds.
A new wood-frame six-room keeper’s house was erected for the Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights, 65 feet from the rear tower. Photographs from the time show two keeper’s houses for the two pairs of range lights, and records show that for a time there was a keeper and an assistant keeper caring for the four lights.
A 1909 inspection revealed that the water collected in a 2,000 gallon cistern was unsatisfactory due to the high amount of smoke from the rendering plant on the island. The inspector recommended frequent cleaning of the cistern.
In 1913 the government announced that they planned to discontinue the Spectacle Island Range Lights. The Pilot Commissioners and the Boston Marine Society objected, thinking that the 1903 Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights were being extinguished. It was soon made clear that the lights in question were the 1897 range lights, made obsolete by changes in the shipping channel. The lights were discontinued on July 15, 1913. After this the Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights were generally referred to as the Spectacle Island Range Lights.
John Lelan Hart became keeper in 1926. When he retired in 1938 at age 68, Hart said that although he had spent his life on the sea or near it, he had “never really enjoyed it.”
According to historian Edward Rowe Snow, the last keeper at Spectacle Island was said to have been murdered at the outbreak of World War II. Snow also stated that six murders had taken place on or close to Spectacle Island, including the sensational murder of heiress Lynn Kauffman, who washed ashore on the island in 1959.
Records are unclear but it appears the Broad Sound Channel Inner Range Lights were deactivated in the 1940s. They were not in operation by 1950.
As an interesting side note, for a number of years there was a fog signal between Spectacle Island and Castle Island, which is attached by a causeway to South Boston. The fog signal was mounted on pilings, known as a “dolphin.” In 1914 John Lindberg, a former assistant keeper of Graves Light, moved to Castle Island with his family to tend this signal. Lindberg became chief engineer on the Nantucket lightship, leaving his wife in charge of the fog signal. When it became foggy Helen Lindberg would throw a switch in a closet that activated the signal. Helen Lindberg remained keeper of the signal until 1948, making her the last civilian “lamplighter” in the Boston Harbor area.
Spectacle Island is now jointly owned by the City of Boston and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Management. A piece of railing from one of the 1903 range lights is in storage at a D.E.M. facility.
The island is on the verge of a new life as a public park, scheduled to open in 2002. The island’s basic shape has once again been modified using dirt from Boston’s massive “Big Dig” project, a restructuring of the city’s highway system. The island eventually will have a visitor center and a marina.
A note from the writer: Please let me know if you have additional information on these range lights. I’d be especially interested in information regarding keepers on Spectacle Island. You can email me at keeper@lighthouse.cc
This story appeared in the
December 2001 edition of Lighthouse Digest Magazine. The print edition contains more stories than our internet edition, and each story generally contains more photographs - often many more - in the print edition. For subscription information about the print edition, click here.
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