Parts of a Lighthouse

How this list was compiled: Part names and every detail line were checked, for facts only and with nothing copied, against pages read on 2026-09-20. The United States Lighthouse Society's Lighthouse Glossary of Terms: https://uslhs.org/resources/education/glossaries-facts-trivia/lighthouse-glossary-terms (astragal, a metal bar running vertically or diagonally that divides the lantern room glass into sections; catwalk, a narrow elevated walkway to a light tower built out in the water; chariot and lens pedestal; clockwork mechanism, gears, pulleys and weights that keepers wound; daymark, the color scheme or pattern that identifies a lighthouse by day; fog signal, bells, whistles and horns; Fresnel lens, a convex lens with many glass prisms; fuel, including lard, whale oil and kerosene; gallery, a platform, walkway or balcony outside the watch room or the lantern room; lamp, the lighting apparatus inside a lens; lantern, the glass enclosure at the top of the tower that housed the lens; light station, the tower and all the outbuildings, namely the keeper's living quarters, boathouse, fuel storage building and fog-signaling building; parapet, which this glossary gives as a walkway with railings; service room, for keeping fuel and other supplies; tower, the structure supporting the lantern room; ventilator, the round ball at the top that lets out the heat of the lamp; watch room, usually immediately beneath the lantern room, with windows). The Historic Lighthouse Preservation Handbook of the US National Park Service, the US Coast Guard and partners, 1997, read in the copy hosted by the United States Lighthouse Society and linked from https://uslhs.org/resources/preservation-management : https://uslhs.org/sites/default/files/attached-files/HistoricLighthousePreservationHandbook.pdf (Part II: a light station on land had a keeper's quarters, oil house, fog-signal building, workshop, boathouse and more; the tower served as a support for the lantern, which housed the optic and was surrounded by a gallery; stairs either wound around a central column or spiraled along the inside of the tower walls; windows were placed to give daylight onto the stairs; taller towers had landings at regular intervals; the top landing ended at the watch room, where the keeper on duty made sure the light was working; the catwalk of the Great Lakes piers. Part IV, Lantern: the floor, some parapet walls and the lens pedestal are cast iron; the roof, ventilation ball and lightning rod are typically copper, which withstands weathering; astragals and clamps that hold the lantern glass are typically bronze; the ventilation ball at the apex of the roof was the main vent for the fumes and smoke of the oil lamp, and all vents were baffled against wind. Part IV, Doors: plain plank doors on early towers and paneled, trimmed entrances on later ones. Part VI glossary: astragals, balcony, daymark, gallery deck, lamp, lantern also called the lantern room, lantern glass also called lantern glazing, oil house, a small stone or concrete building put up after kerosene came into use, parapet, which this handbook gives as the low wall in the lantern room holding up the glazing and roof, storm panels, which it gives as the Lighthouse Board's term for emergency glazing, tower, and ventilation ball). Wikipedia, text only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthouse (lantern room, storm panes held by metal glazing bars, a stormproof ventilator, lightning rod on the cupola roof, watch room or service room beneath the lantern room with the clockworks that turned the lens, the gallery used mainly for cleaning the outside of the lantern windows, daymark, the keeper's living quarters, fuel house, boathouse and fog-signaling building, and the point that the lamp needs height enough to be seen in time), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_lens (dioptric and catadioptric prisms and bull's-eye panels that gather the lamp's light into beams), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stairs (spiral staircase, landing and handrail as the general words, with lighthouses named among the towers that have spiral stairs), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daymark (daymark as the general word) and, as the second witness for the name oil house, which the handbook uses and the glossary does not, the search https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=insource%3A%22oil+house%22+intitle%3Alighthouse , which on this date found the words oil house in the text of at least ten lighthouse articles. Licence: own work

The drawing: Drawn for this site on 2026-09-26: a generic brick light station from outside, its tower in section, and the lantern top in section enlarged; the far glazing is drawn as faint lines and the stair's point sits on its first flight. Our own geometry; nothing traced or copied; the text sources are listed in this dataset's source. Licence: own work