KENOSHA LIGHTHOUSE-KENOSHA, WISCONSIN

The original tower was built in 1948, however the bricks used in the 1848 tower were too soft, and a replacement tower had to be built in 1858. This cylindrical structure had a diameter of eight feet, stood fifty feet tall, and was constructed with an outer wall with a thickness of roughly a foot-and-a-half and an inner wall that was eight inches thick. The tower’s ten-sided lantern room housed a fifth-order Fresnel lens that produced a flash of white light every ninety seconds. A brick, one-and-a-half-story keeper’s dwelling was also built in 1858 along with a storeroom located between the tower and dwelling. The Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board for 1865 noted that the inner wall of the lighthouse at Kenosha was “literally crumbling to pieces,” and the outer wall showed “several cracks, caused by the action of the frost.” After Congress appropriated $4,000, the 1858 lighthouse was torn down in 1866, and the present brick tower was erected in its stead, using many of the materials from the old tower. A beacon, erected on a pier at Kenosha earlier that year, was fitted with a fourth-order lens to serve as the main light at Kenosha until the new lighthouse was completed and the lens was transferred to it in time to be exhibited at the opening of navigation in 1867. A companion brick dwelling was completed in 1867, and the lighthouse lot was covered with soil, brought in from the mainland, to combat the shifting sand on the island. The lighthouse was discontinued for a week in 1888, and then in 1893 its signature was changed from a fixed white light varied by a white flash every ninety seconds, to a fixed white light varied by a white flash every forty five seconds through the addition of a flash panel to its lens. On May 23, 1906, Kenosha Lighthouse was permanently discontinued, and its fourth-order lens was transferred to a cylindrical metal tower recently erected on the nearby north pier. The dwelling and grounds of the Kenosha Light Station were retained for use in connection with the Kenosha pierhead and breakwater lights, and in 1908 a redbrick addition was made to the north side of the dwelling to create a duplex for the keepers. The lantern room was removed from the inactive tower in 1913, and a twenty-five-foot-tall mast was erected atop the capped tower for displaying weather and storm warning signals. The Coast Guard left Kenosha Light Station in 1940, following the automation of the breakwater and pierhead lights. After standing vacant for over a decade, the station was going to be razed, but local residents convinced the government to transfer the property to the City of Kenosha in 1955. The city and the Kenosha County Historical Society initiated a restoration of the station in 1991, after the was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. A grant of $18,675 was used in 1992 to repaint the tower, chemically clean it, and repaint its metal stairway. A $15,000 matching grant from the state allowed a replica lantern room to be fabricated and then installed atop the tower on May 7, 1994. During Fourth of July celebrations two years later, a beacon was activated inside the lantern room, but this light does not function as a navigational aid.