A lot on a bluff overlooking the harbor was purchased from Wilhelm Willink, Wilhelm Willink the younger, and Cornelius Vallenhoven on July 10, 1828 for $50. The following month, a $2,700 contract for constructing the lighthouse and a keeper’s dwelling was awarded to Judge Thomas Campbell, whose commission was 2.5%. The contract specifically called for “11 patent lamps; eleven 14” reflectors and 2 spare lamps; double tin oil butts for 500 gals. of oil; 1 lantern canister and iron trivet, etc.”

Using native, rough split, fieldstone, Campbell constructed a 40-foot conical tower with a base diameter of twenty-two feet. The outer ends of the wooden treads in the spiral staircase were embedded in the tower’s masonry, while a massive timber standing at the center of the tower supported the inner ends. A keeper's dwelling and outhouse were fashioned out of the same local materials, and, like the lighthouse, they were each given a double coat of whitewash. Out of the original $5,000 appropriation, only $3,506.78 was spent, and the remaining money was carried to the surplus fund.

The first keeper, appointed on May 27, 1829 at an annual salary of $350, was Joshua Lane, “a deaf, superannuated clergyman, having numerous female dependents.” Lane and his family enjoyed the comforts of the 32 by 20 foot keeper's cottage, which had two main rooms, each equipped with a fireplace. The house's walls were twenty inches thick, and a wing on the east end served as the kitchen. The interior woodwork was “finished in a plain, decent style, with good seasoned stuff.”

View of Barcelona Lighthouse from harbor Photograph courtesy Darrell Maxwell

On January 1, 1831, Thomas Campbell signed a contract with the Collector of Customs and Lighthouse Inspector at Buffalo to provide the Barcelona Lighthouse with natural gas “at all times and seasons” and “to keep the apparatus and fixtures in repair” at an annual cost of $213, payable quarterly. The resulting illumination by natural gas of the first public building in the United States was described at the time as follows:

The Lighthouse at Portland Harbor in the County of Chautauqua and State of New York, is now illuminated, in the most splendid style, by natural carbureted hydrogen gas. Ever since the first settlement of the country about Portland, it has been known that an inflammable gas constantly issued from the fissures of a rock, which forms the bed of a little brook that empties into Lake Erie, near the harbor, in such quantity as to be easily set on fire by applying a flame to it. This fountain of gas was known to the early settlers of the country by the name of the ‘burning spring.’ No valuable use, however, was made of this gas until Mr. W. A. Hart, an ingenious gunsmith of the village of Fredonia, and some other young mechanics, five or six years ago, collected a quantity of similar gas from the rocky bed of Canadaway creek in a reservoir, and conveyed it from thence to all the principal stores, taverns, and shops in the said village, where it is still used instead of lamps.

To capture the gas, workers dug into the rock where the largest quantity of gas was found to create a well with a depth of three feet and a diameter of roughly forty feet. A masonry cap was erected over this well, and natural gas was transported via hollowed-out wooden pipes three quarters of a mile to the Barcelona station. Mr. W.A. Hart built a unique stand of lamps to burn the gas atop the tower. This device consisted of two tiers of horizontal arms that extended in a semicircle from a central tube. The lower level had seven arms and the upper six, spaced evenly above the arms of the lower tier. At the end of each arm was a gas burner with a reflector. A stopcock regulated the quantity of gas consumed by each lamp. One observer remarked that the light “exceeds both in quantity and brilliancy, anything of the kind I ever saw.” It was also stated that when viewed from Lake Erie at night, it looked as if the whole tower were “one complete, constant and unwavering blaze.”

In 1838, Lieutenant C.T. Platt of the Navy gave the following report on the status of the natural gas supply at Portland Lighthouse. “Owing to a failure of gas, that may be attributed to excessive drought, oil is now substituted. It is presumed, however, that the fall rains will replenish the stream from which the fountain is supplied, and thus prevent the escape and loss of the gas. The recurrence of such a drought will, if ever occurring, be at great intervals, and will not then, probably, render the use of oil for a long time necessary.”

Natural gas was in use at the lighthouse until at least 1851, as the Treasury Department report for that year included this paragraph. “We have one lighthouse at Portland on Lake Erie, lighted with natural gas, carried a distance of two miles in pipes to the tower; and even here we are obliged to keep oil and lamps, as water frequently collects in the pipes, over which the gas will not pass, and whilst they are being taken up and freed from water, oil light has to be used. We have a contract for supplying this gas at the annual cost of the oil which would be required, if lighted with that material.”

Joshua Lane kept the light until his death in 1846, when Joshua La Due took over the duties for the same salary of $350 that his predecessor had been receiving for almost two decades. The Report of the Lighthouse Board for 1855 noted that Barcelona did not possess a harbor, and that its lighthouse was not necessary even as a “lake coast light.” This remark was likely due to the Great Gale of 1844, which destroyed a number of lakeside warehouses and wharves, including those at Barcelona. Local officials tried to restore the port to its former importance, but the opening of a railroad to nearby Westfield in 1852 doomed this effort. Even though it was considered unnecessary, the Barcelona Lighthouse was fitted with a “lens apparatus” in 1857. Two years later the Lighthouse Board discontinued the Barcelona Lighthouse, citing as a reason the “mutations of commerce and changes of channels or harbors.”

According to a clause in the original deed, the lighthouse property was to revert to the original owners if the light were discontinued. It appears that this did not occur, as the lighthouse property remained vacant until it was sold at auction in 1872 to George Patterson. In the 1880s the original keeper's house was enlarged and dormers were added. The original lantern room was likely removed when the tower was discontinued. An open wooden lantern, which ties in nicely with the adjacent dwelling, was later placed atop the tower. In 1962, the lighthouse was re-supplied with natural gas as a sentimental nod to its past significance. Iroquois Gas Company supplied the pipes, while National Fuel keeps the lamp in good repair, and the Town of Westfield pays the gas bill. Though a light is maintained in the tower, it is not considered an aid to navigation.

The lighthouse remained in the Patterson family for five generations and more then a century, until it was sold in 1998 to Bruce and Ann Mulkin of Fredonia, New York. Today the Barcelona Harbor sports a pair of concrete and steel breakwaters and a publicly accessible pier. The lighthouse, which has received minor repairs over the years, was given National Historic Landmark status in 1972.

Photo Gallery: 1 2 3 4

References

1. Annual Report of the Lighthouse Board, 1855, 1857, 1859.
2. Seaway Trail Lighthouses, James Tinney and Mary Burdette-Watkins, 2000.
3. Historically Famous Lighthouses, U.S. Coast Guard.
4. “Barcelona Lighthouse- Yesterday and Today,” Dale Pappert, Lighthouse Digest, January 1999.