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History of the Third District U.S. Lighthouse Depot
Excerpt: New York City Landmark Preservation Commission Report, November 25, 1980 by James E. Dibble, Senior Landmarks Preservation Specialist - Research Department. (Headings added & footnotes renumbered) |
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The Lighthouse Service was established by act of Congress approved August 7, 1789. This act was the ninth law passed by the first Congress and the first provision for any public work.1 Its purpose was to create a central and unified lighthouse administration to be controlled and supervised by the government of the United States. Prior to 1789, all lighthouses had been owned by the states in which they happened to be. The act of 1789 provided that the United States Government would be responsible for the cost of operating all lighthouses in the country, provided that title to these lighthouses was turned over to the United States within one year from the date of the act. However, it was not until 1797 that all the states had ceded their lighthouses to the United States Government.2 The act of 1789 placed the care and administration of the Lighthouse Establishment under the Treasury Department. As the first Secretary of the Treasury, this duty devolved upon Alexander Hamilton. In 1792, the office of Commissioner of Revenue was created and Hamilton assigned responsibility for lighthouse affairs to that branch. Although under different offices of the Revenue Department at different times, the Lighthouse Service remained with that department until 1852; the last thirty-three years were under the supervision of Stephen Pleasanton, Fifth Auditor of the Treasury.3 By midcentury, administration of the Lighthouse Service was becoming a burden to the Treasury Department. The number of lighthouses had increased from fifty-five in 1820 to 325 lighthouses and lightships with almost 1,000 buoys, fog-signals, and other aids to navigation.4 On May 21, 1851, the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a committee headed by Rear Admiral William B. Shubrick to make a thorough investigation of the lighthouse situation. The committee turned in a very comprehensive report, some 760 pages in length, which advised a complete reorganization of the Lighthouse Service. This led to the law creating the Lighthouse Board, established on October 9, 1852, which administered the Lighthouse Service for the next fiftyeight years.5 The Lighthouse Board was instituted as a semiautonomous body having complete control over Lighthouse matters, but responsible to the Secretary of the Treasury as President of the Board, ex-officio, for its actions. The first chairman was Admiral Shubrick who, with a brief intermission, served in that capacity for nineteen years. He was succeeded by Professor Joseph Henry, a brilliant scientist and researcher who was also secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Professor Henry was chairman of the Lighthouse Board for seven years, and the only civilian who ever held that post. Throughout his many years of devoted service, Professor Henry refused to accept any payment whatever.6 The Lighthouse Board divided the United States into twelve lighthouse districts with an inspector and an engineer for each district. The New York area was in the Third District which included the Atlantic coast line from Maine to Delaware.7 An office was established in New York City and for some time supplies for lighthouses in the Third District were kept on piers and in warehouses in the city. This arrangement was not very satisfactory for several reasons. More office room was needed than was available and since many of the materials on hand were flammable or explosive, storage was costly and restricted to safe areas. Methods of operating lighthouses had not kept up with scientific discoveries and many nations, particularly the French, were more advanced and better equipped.8 The Lighthouse Board felt that an experimental station should be established where tests of new materials and investigation of new methods could set improved standards to then be applied to all lighthouses in the United States. Admiral Shubrick and Professor Henry, who then headed the experimental department, set out to see how these very special needs could be met. They wanted a location where all functions of the Lighthouse Service for the Third District could be combined and consolidated, which also had easy access for large ships, and room to erect buildings suited to the needs of the department.
Since 1799, the State of New York had owned a large tract of
land at Castleton, later Tompkinsville., which extended along the Narrows on
Staten Island. This property was used originally for a Marine Hospital and a
Quarantine Station. In 1814, the State of New York, with Governor Daniel D.
Tompkins as grantor, sold much of this acreage to the United States Government
and a section containing about five acres was set aside for use as a Revenue
Station for the port of New York.9 This was
actually more land than the Revenue Service needed and, in their search,
Admiral Shubrick and Professor Henry decided that it might be possible to
locate a Lighthouse Depot on this part of Staten Island. Their efforts
were rewarded in 1863, when the Secretary of the Treasury wrote the following
letter:10 TREASURY DEPARTMENT Rear Admiral Wm. B. Shubrick Sir: I have received a letter from the Chairman of a Special Committee of the
LightHouse Board enclosing a copy of its report adopted by the Board, in
reference to the selection of a site for a LightHouse Establishment depot in
the vicinity of New York. This report recommends the occupation or a portion of the lot now belonging
to this Department on Staten Island, Castleton, N. York, and the transfer to
the Treasury Department of a portion ($32,000.) of the appropriation of 3rd
March 1863, for a LightHouse depot for the improvement of the property,
erection of a seawall &c, &c. This recommendation meets my approval, and instructions have been given to
the supervising architect of the Treasury Department to make the necessary
steps to carry into execution the improvements designated in his letter of the
24th ulto -- and accompanying plan -- copies of which are enclosed herewith.
The Department hereby assigns to the LightHouse Board, and for its
permanent use and occupation for the purposes above named, so much of its lot
on Staten Island as lies north of the dotted line on the map or plat containing
about 2 1/2, acres. I am, very respectfully, An 1866 map of the Marine Hospital Grounds in the Town of
Castleton, Staten Island, New York, surveyed by J. Nelson Tubbs, Civil
Engineer, by direction of J.P. Goodsell, State Engineer and Surveyor, shows the
grounds of the Revenue Station roughly divided in half with the Revenue Service
and the Lighthouse Service each having a residence for a superintendent,
an office, a storehouse, and a pier. 11 Plans
were afoot to move the Revenue Service to Manhattan and, in 1868, this was done
after an office at 28 Pine Street was fitted up for them. In May, 1867, in anticipation of taking over the entire
station, the Acting Lighthouse Engineer, Joseph Lederle, drew a map
showing the existing buildings and those which were proposed including a large
brick workshop to have a cooper shop on the first floor, space for lamp makers
on the second floor, and laboratories for testing oil and other experiments on
the third floor.12 Other work included vaults to
contain oil, new sheds for storage, and a much needed office building. Mullett
in his capacity as Supervising Architect was responsible for the design. |
The Office Building
A photograph taken in the spring of 1868 shows the workshop, referred to as the "lamp shop," under construction with stone walls carried up to the second floor level. The spot later occupied by the Office Building is shown stacked high with bricks waiting to be used for the upper floors of the lamp shop. This building is still standing with the date 1868 carved on a stone above the doorway. The next building to be built at the Lighthouse Depot was the "Office Building," the subject of this designation. Beginning with the year 1868, the Annual Reports of the Lighthouse Board describe the progress made with the construction of the Office Building as follows:13 Annual Report for 1868: "Office Building At present the offices connected with the service of this depot (Staten Island) and of the Third District, are located in the storehouse, a building which is not fireproof, and wherein is usually stored something like a half million Dollars' worth of Lighthouse supplies and apparatus, besides records which could not be replaced. No fire should be permitted in or about this building, and to avoid the necessity which now exists, a fireproof building for offices, and for the preservation of archives, should be built after the design long since approved as part of this establishment. For this building the foundation has been laid, and the walls carried up to the water table, where the work will probably stop for a year, unless an appropriation for its continuance is specifically made, as it is not thought the general fund for the support of the Lighthouse establishment during this year and the next can afford a larger draft upon it than that required for the completion of the workshops." Annual Report for 1869: "The work on the office building has been continued. The first story is nearly completed, and the iron beams of the second floor are laid. It is expected that the building will be roofed in before winter fairly begins." Annual Report for 1870: "Building for offices In last year's report it was stated that the first story of the building was completed and the iron beams of the second floor laid. Since then the second story and the iron roof were put up, the slating and tinning completed, the iron stairs set, and the stone sidewalk laid. The inner partitions are all up, and the iron beams arched over with brick. To complete the building there are yet required the furring and plastering, flooring, sashes and shutters, heating apparatus, doors, painting &c." Annual Report for 1871: "Building for offices The work on this building having been suspended for more than one year for want of funds, has been resumed, and the structure will be completed and ready for occupation by November."
The walls are of red sandstone and hardpressed red brick of excellent quality, while the mansard roof is covered with dark grey imbricated slates arranged in a hexagonal design a most striking combination of colors and materials, now concealed beneath white paint. It is interesting to note that when the wings were added in 1901, the original Second Empire design (executed in the same materials) was used throughout except for the windows, where oneoverone sashes popular at the turnofthecentury were substituted for the twooverfour sashes of the 1860s. The foundations up to and including the water table are of rockfaced granite as are the window enframements, the quoins at the corners, the belt course at second floor level, and the square stone porch at the main entrance. The walls of the first story are constructed of random ashlar blocks of red sandstone while those of the second story, above the granite belt course, are of hardpressed red brick laid in a running bond. Originally, the building presented the same basic arrangement of openings on all four sides. The front having a centered entrance with a single window above and paired windows at the sides on both first and second floors; the rear, identical, but without a porch at the entrance; and the sides with the same design, except that all openings were windows. All windows contained two-over-four sashes which are still in place. Each of the four sides of the sloping mansard roof had three metalframed, flattopped dormer windows with twooverfour sashes and decorative "Flemish" scrolls at the base where the enframements met the roof at the eves, just above the wide cornice which contained a metallined gutter atop a wooden frieze decorated with long and short horizontal wooden panels. There was a small square cupola in the center of the roof to aid in ventilating the building.
Today, the front facade remains totally undisturbed. The sides have been
altered toward the rear where the wings added in 1901 attach themselves to the
original building by the device of small square entrance bays which fill the
corners and rise the full height of the building. The rear of the original
building is now engulfed by the long south side of the addition, and the cupola
has been removed. The square stone porch at the entrance, always a conspicuous
feature, remains unaltered although the original doors have been removed.
On July 1, 1903, the Lighthouse Board was transferred from the
Treasury Department to that of Commerce and Labor and subsequently was
reorganized as the Bureau of Lighthouses on July 1, 1910. The functions
of the Bureau of Lighthouses were taken over by the U.S. Coast Guard on July 1,
1939, at which time the Office Building of the Lighthouse Service at St.
George, Staten Island, became the Administration Building of the Coast Guard
Station located there.14 In 1966, the U.S. Coast
Guard Station for the Third District moved from Staten Island to Governor's
Island which had just been vacated by the Army and after a century of
continuous service, the Staten Island facility was closed, to become surplus
Government property.
The Old Administration Building at St. George, Staten Island, constructed
1868 1871, which for nearly seventy years served as the Office Building for
the Lighthouse Depot, is a splendid example of a small scale
government building in French Second Empire style designed during the tenure of
Alfred B. Mullett, as Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department. Built
of superior materials and enlarged in 1901 using the original Second Empire
design, the Old Administration Building typifies an era when government
buildings had great symbolic importance and architectural distinction was an
essential part of that quality. |
FOOTNOTES
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The French Second Empire style office building as completed in 1871, was
the square portion which now forms the center section of the structure and it
was constructed of the best materials. The foundations and the stone trim are
of a pale grey granite liberally streaked with veins of pink and flecked with
tiny specks of black. 
It is built entirely of rockfaced granite with wide pilasters at the
corners which support the roof and the low stone parapet above it. In the
center of the railing above the entrance is an oblong stone tablet bearing the
date 1869. Each of the three sides of the porch contains a roundarched
opening which formerly had a demi-lune glass transom and a pair of tall wooden
doors. These openings are indented just enough behind the plane of the
pilasters at the sides to lend a sense of lightness to a rather bulky
composition. The great charm of the original building was that it had an
intimate almost domestic feeling which was lost when the wings
were added. However, even with the wings, when compared to the storehouse and
the lamp shop which flank it, the Office Building is still a small
scale structure.