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On January 1, 1939, The Sun, a New York newspaper that operated from 1833 to 1950 and is best known for its 1897 editorial “Is There a Santa Claus,” which is more commonly referred to as “Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus,” published this photo of how lighthouses of the future would look.
Their story told of how the circular shaped lighthouses that are so common to so many people would dramatically change in appearance in the future. This was based on a design by architectural students at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a privately funded college in the East Village of Manhattan in New York where Abraham Lincoln made his famous speech in 1860 that is widely believed to have been the catalyst that propelled him to get his party’s nomination for president.
The Sun reported that “This new tower design is square at the base, has an open face with two fins tapering upward as support for the light, and is wholly of reinforced concrete. At the right is a combination memorial chapel and mausoleum in memory of sailors who died at sea. Constructed with parabolic arches, the building is lighted through glass substituted for the concrete slab in the second arch.”
The Sun was known for taking on dramatic stories; it had some of the best reporters and columnists of any newspaper in history, and they were not afraid of sensationalism. The 1952 movie “Deadline – USA,” starring Humphrey Bogart, which is without doubt the best newspaper movie ever made, was a dramatic crime drama interwoven with the story about the death of a U.S. newspaper and was loosely based on the demise of The Sun newspaper.
But apparently the students at Cooper Union and the reporter assigned to this story knew very little about lighthouses. It would be highly unlikely that the government would build a chapel and mausoleum at every new lighthouse that might be built in the future. Why would they? And, who would pay for it? If the reporter or reporters had been observing and consuming the news of the time, they would have also realized that automation was beginning to take a hold at lighthouses and new aids to navigation were rapidly being developed. More importantly, there had been serious discussions in Congress to do away with the Lighthouse Service, something that came to fruit just seven months later.
This story appeared in the
Mar/Apr 2014 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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