St. Augustine Lighthouse

A 1589 map by the Italian cartographer Giovanni Battista Boazio, drawn to show Sir Francis Drake's raid, carries the first documented archival reference to a wooden Spanish watchtower at the end of Anastasia Island, the site that became the lighthouse ^{1, 2}. By 1737 the Spanish had replaced the earlier construction with a 30-foot watchtower of coquina, a local shell rock, and wood ¹. Congress appropriated $5,000 on March 3, 1823 to convert the old Spanish tower into a lighthouse, and the modified tower entered service in 1824 ^{4, 3, 2}. Juan Andreu, a Minorcan, was paid $350 a year to keep it and to tend its 10 oil lamps, set in silver bowl-shaped reflectors ⁴.

In 1859 head keeper Joseph Andreu fell to his death while whitewashing the old tower, when the lashing holding his scaffolding gave way ^{4, 3}. Maria Mestre de los Dolores Andreu succeeded her husband as keeper that year, and the National Trust for Historic Preservation describes her as the first Latina woman to command a federal shore installation and the third female lighthouse keeper in Florida ^{3, 4}. During the Civil War, Confederate sympathizers in St. Augustine removed the lens and clockwork mechanism and hid them to block Union shipping ^{1, 4, 3}. The old light was relit in 1867 ^{1, 4, 3}. It had been built too close to the shore, and on August 22, 1880 it toppled into the sea ^{4, 3, 6}.

Paul J. Pelz, chief draftsman of the Lighthouse Board and later a co-architect of the Library of Congress, drew up the plans for the present lighthouse ^{4, 6}. Hezekiah H. Pittee, superintendent for Atlantic Coast lighthouse construction, oversaw the building of the replacement tower farther inland on northeast Anastasia Island ^{3, 8}. Sources differ on the start of the work. The museum's own history says the U.S. Lighthouse Service began construction of the 165-foot tower in 1871 and finished in 1874, with Congress appropriating $100,000, while Lighthousefriends dates the start to late spring 1872 and records $60,000 appropriated on March 3, 1871 with $20,000 added in 1872 ^{1, 9, 4, 6}. A further $25,000 on March 3, 1873 let the work continue ^{4, 1}.

The tower was built of brick from Alabama, granite from Georgia, ironwork forged in Philadelphia, and a first-order Fresnel lens crafted in France ⁴. The museum states the nine-foot-tall lens was hand-made for St. Augustine in Paris by the firm of Sauter & Lemonier; the Florida Lighthouse Association gives the maker as L. Sautter et Limonier and the date as 1874 ^{1, 6}. The museum states that keeper William R. Russell lit the oil lamp inside the new first-order lens for the first time on October 15, 1874 ¹. The tower carries a black-and-white spiral daymark, the same daymark used at Cape Hatteras, with a red lantern ^{4, 6, 9}.

Keepers went on living at the old light station until a duplex dwelling just east of the new tower was finished, which Lighthousefriends dates to 1875 and both the museum and News4JAX date to 1876 ^{4, 7, 5}. The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as "St. Augustine Lighthouse and Keeper's Quarters," NRIS ID 81000668, with documentation published March 19, 1981; the record names Pittee as architect and lists 1871, 1874 and 1876 as significant years ⁸. Measurements differ by source as well: the Florida Lighthouse Association gives a tower height of 167 feet with 219 steps, a focal plane of 161 feet and a fixed white light flashing every 30 seconds, while Lighthousefriends describes the 1874 light as a revolving first-order lens at a 165-foot focal plane reached by 214 stairs ^{6, 4}.

Three keepers stood three eight-hour watches, hauling a 30-pound can of lard oil up the tower and winding the 275-pound weight that revolved the lens ⁴. The job reached beyond the tower: on September 23, 1887 the keepers rescued nine passengers from the schooner Dream ⁴. Electricity reached the keeper's dwelling in 1925 and the tower in 1936, the year the second assistant keeper position was eliminated ⁴.

A Coastal Lookout Building was built at the light station in late 1941 and early 1942, and armed guards watched the sea from the station around the clock during World War II ^{1, 9}. Because German U-boats patrolled off Florida, the light was dimmed so ships would not be silhouetted in its beam ^{9, 1}. The station was de-staffed in 1955, and full automation came around 1971 with the installation of a sun relay atop the tower ⁴.

The vacated keeper's house was declared surplus and was gutted by fire on July 28, 1970; Lighthousefriends calls the fire arson and the museum calls it suspicious ^{4, 1}. The Junior Service League of St. Augustine took on the restoration in 1980 ^{4, 1}. Lighthousefriends says the dwelling opened as a maritime museum eight years later, while the museum's own account puts the end of the restoration in 1990, the League's lease from the Coast Guard and a part-time opening in 1991, and a full-time maritime museum in early 1994 ^{4, 1}. The League signed its Coast Guard lease for the lighthouse in 1990, and the tower opened to public climbing the following year ⁴.

In 1986 bullets from a .30-06 rifle shattered 19 prisms of the historic Fresnel lens, and an FBI investigation identified a 14-year-old ^{4, 1}. The Coast Guard shut the damaged lens down in 1991 and substituted a modern airport beacon ^{1, 4}. After replacement prisms and a bull's-eye panel were recreated, the restored lens resumed operation on May 22, 1993, and CNN covered the first Fresnel lens restoration in the nation ^{4, 1}.

The St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum was separately incorporated from the Junior Service League in 1998, and a visitors' center was added in 2000 ^{4, 1}. In 2002 the Coast Guard transferred the tower and Fresnel lens to the museum, the first transfer under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000 ^{4, 1}. The museum paid $150,000 in 2014 for the keeper's house and the remaining light station property it had previously leased from St. Johns County ^{4, 1}. In April 2015 it ran a crowdfunding campaign and sold T-shirts toward the $280,000 needed to repair and repaint the tower ⁴.

Restoration of two Coast Guard buildings, a garage and a barracks, for World War II exhibits began in 2016 and finished in 2018 ^{4, 7}. The museum is a Smithsonian affiliate and was accredited by the American Alliance of Museums in 2017 ¹. The campus on the five-acre property includes the 1874 tower, the Keepers' House, a Maritime Education Center with a conservation lab, a 1942 World War II barracks, a 1936 garage, Heritage Boatworks, and a maritime hammock nature area ^{7, 3}. The museum reports more than 216,000 visitors and a collection of 19,000 objects, archival documents and archaeological specimens ¹.

The lighthouse remains an active aid to navigation with its original first-order Fresnel lens of more than 370 handmade glass prisms ^{6, 7, 2}. The tower climb is a self-guided ascent of a 219-step spiral staircase, open to visitors 44 inches and taller ⁷. The Florida Lighthouse Association lists admission to the tower and museum as $9.50 for adults, $7.50 for seniors 55 and over, and $7.50 for children 12 and under ⁶.

The museum's visit page markets the site as "one of the most haunted locations in St. Augustine" and says it is consistently ranked among the most haunted sites in the city ⁷. Add-on programs include the Dark of the Moon Ghost Experience, investigation-only sessions, Lighthouse Ghost Tales, Twilight at the Top, Sunset Moonrise, and a Lens Room Tour priced at $500 per person ⁷. News4JAX reported in 2022 that employees and guests have described paranormal encounters at the lighthouse and keeper's house over the years, and Bobby Dye of the museum told the station that visitors are shocked when they experience something paranormal on the grounds ⁵.

Specialty programs manager Sammy Washburn told News4JAX that windows at the site open and close when they are not supposed to be open or closed ⁵. She said guests who struggle with the climb sometimes report feeling a hand on their back, guiding them to the top, and she attributes the touch to Maria Andreu, described as a ghost dressed in white and one of the only figures reported there as a full-body apparition ⁵. Washburn also told the station that keeper Peter Rasmussen's presence is signaled by a cherry tobacco scent, especially when a guest insults him, and that she was once locked inside the lighthouse until a colleague climbed out a side window to unlock the door ⁵. News4JAX reported that one of the site's more popular ghosts appears in shadowy form, and that experts believe it may have been a former lighthouse keeper ⁵.

Specialty programs manager Abbey Smith told News4JAX that the Victorian parlor of the 1876 keeper's house is frequented by its first keepers, Major William Harn and his wife Kate ⁵. Smith said a cough attributed to Harn's tuberculosis can still be heard in the house, sometimes right in a visitor's ear, and that visitors see an indentation in a parlor seat as if someone sat down, followed by a long drawn-out sigh ⁵. She recounted a parlor rocking chair rocking violently after a new guide mistakenly called the keeper "Mr. Williams Harns," then stopping when told to ⁵. Smith said Kate Harn is reported as a shadow-like figure moving through rooms and hallways ⁵.

News4JAX also relayed one of the most famous stories about the Pittee girls: three Pittee sisters and a friend were playing on a brakeless railway cart near the lighthouse construction site when it crashed into the water, and the older sisters and their friend drowned while the youngest survived ⁵. Smith told the station that the Pittee girls' footprints show up often at the keeper's house and that they have untied her shoelaces many times ⁵.

Visitors commonly describe a light touch or pressure on the back during the tower climb, shadow-like figures glimpsed in the keepers' house, and the smell of tobacco with no source nearby. Small footprints and chairs or objects shifting in the parlor come up often on the evening tours. Others make the climb and sit through a full tour and report nothing unusual.