The Aesthetics of Grosse Point Lighthouse

For the architecture segment of my aesthetics project I chose to feature the Grosse Point Lighthouse in Evanston. It’s located off of Central Street and Sheridan Road, and I’m always intrigued by how beautiful it is, how old it looks, and the fact that it’s still on every night. The Grosse Point Lighthouse was built by the US Government in 1873 as the final approach to Chicago marking point. The area was first charted in 1673 by the famous French explorer and cartographer Louis Jolliet on a Jesuit missionary trip. By the 1800’s Chicago had more arrivals and departures in the average shipping season than New York and San Francisco. The project finally began in 1872 under the word of lighthouse engineer Orlando Metcalf Poe. By March of 1874 the project was complete just in time for the start of the Great Lakes shipping season. The lighthouse held a keeper’s quarter’s area, a passage way leading to an above ground fuel facility, and the lighthouse itself. ‘Lighthouse Beach’ now holds the structure, and there has been recent talk of turning the keeper’s quarters and large facility building into a bed and breakfast. The Evanston community is not too thrilled about the idea. 

I think that Poe succeeded in incorporating beautiful architecture with practicality. The building connected to the lighthouse has large windows to bring in natural light, and a greenhouse connected to the front. Both the building and the lighthouse are painted a dark red and snow white, presumably to represent safety. Both buildings look past long reeds and dunes and onto Lake Michigan. The distance from Grosse Point Lighthouse to the Chicago River is about twelve miles, an appropriate distance for entering boats. Poe’s color schemes, placement, and architecture is timeless and tasteful, making for the perfect building that is meant to last decades or centuries. Literally, a lighthouse is meant to communicate safety—either by finding shore or avoiding it. As a lighthouse engineer, Poe was given minimal creativity, but with his fellow architects was able to create something beautiful. 

I find Grosse Point Lighthouse beautiful because I love the idea that it was standing before anything else in Evanston was. It’s setting is so peaceful and quiet, and it is surrounded by century-old trees and wild flowers. One could argue that a lighthouse isn’t art because it is practical, if not necessary, but the ideas and notions that go along with any lighthouse to me is tranquil. I especially love Grosse Point lighthouse because it is such a milestone in the creation of Evanston. To me it also has its’ own sort of personality. A wise tower that has seen everything on the shores of the beach I work at before me.