From collection Eastern Illustrating & Publishing Company Collection
LB2016.13.283
Image of Brown's Head Light, Vinalhaven, taken from offshore. The complex, which aids navigation through the Fox Island Thorofare, includes, from the left, the fog bell encased in a pyramidal tower, the boathouse, the keeper's house and light, and an unidentified structure at the right. The lighthouse in the image replaced an earlier structure built in 1831. "In 1855, Inspector W.B. Franklin reported that the lighthouse was worn out and requested $5,000 to build a new one. A one-and-a-half-story, wood-frame dwelling, linked to a cylindrical brick tower by a covered passage, was completed in 1857. The new tower, equipped with a fifth-order Fresnel instead of the lamps and reflectors used previously, was rather short, measuring just fourteen feet to the base of the lantern. In 1908, a 1,058-pound fog bell, suspended from a pyramidal wooden tower, joined the light as a navigational aid on Browns Head. Before its arrival, the keeper or a family member had to ring a “much magnified dinner bell” that hung near the door to the house. The fog signal was eventually upgraded to a diaphragm horn in the late 1940s, but in 1951, a fog bell was again put into service at the station. That fog bell, which was used until 1969, is now displayed at the Vinalhaven Historical Society Museum." -- "Browns Head Light" Lighthousefriends.com According to the above article, the boathouse and slip were constructed in 1895.
