5/2/2023 0 Comments Breakwaters burlington vtLocal citizens now enjoy a world-class Waterfront Park and Promenade, a Community Boathouse, Community Sailing Center, the ECHO Center museum and aquarium, over 40 acres of open space near the water, and a seven-mile bike path. Not too many years ago, petroleum tanks and other industrial sites dominated the area. The lighthouses represent the culmination of two decades of improvements to the waterfront. Army Corps of Engineers, Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, Preservation Trust of Vermont, the Lake Champlain Basin Program, the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation, and the Burlington Department of Parks and Recreation. Other partners on the project included the Burlington Economic Development Office, U.S. The Coast Guard project officer was Lieutenant Commander Will Smith. The replica lighthouses have replaced the skeleton towers as aids to navigation. The 46-foot North Light is located near the city's new fishing pier, and the 26-foot South Light is close to Perkins Pier. Larry Paul, project manager for Atlantic Mechanical, agreed with the philosophy behind the building of the new towers, saying, "The aesthetics are so much more pleasing than your generic steel tower with a light on it." Unlike the original lighthouses, the new ones are strengthened with steel frames, and their wood siding is made up of easily replaceable panels. Construction took place on the Burlington waterfront to allow public viewing of the process. Coast Guard Civil Engineering Unit in Providence, Rhode Island. of Wiscasset, Maine under contract to the U.S. We worked with the photographs and other historical images to ensure that people seeing the towers today would be actually viewing the same façade that they would have seen during those time periods." The new wooden structures were built by Atlantic Mechanical, Inc. "What we did," he said, "was use photographic evidence to create a set of plans that from the outside seem historically correct, and of course we chose two different time periods to represent - the smaller, southern light tower, which is circa 1857, and the larger, northern light tower which is circa 1890. According to Art Cohn, director of the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum, the original plans for the lighthouses couldn't be located. "Given the historic significance of the breakwater," said Burlington's Mayor Peter Clavelle, "we came up with the idea of recreating the original lighthouse structures, and approached Senator Patrick Leahy's office about the possibility of creating the replicas." $250,000 in funding was secured with Senator Leahy's help, and a piece of history was brought back with the construction of new wooden lighthouses. The small lighthouses were moved and rebuilt multiple times as the breakwater was expanded, and a middle light was added for a time beginning in 1890. In 1857, navigational lights were added to the north and south ends of the breakwater. Above right: This detail from an 1858 illustration shows the Burlington Breakwater South Light that has been newly replicated. By 1896, the breakwater reached 4,200 feet in length. It was one of five federal breakwaters eventually built on the lake. In an effort to protect the harbor, a granite breakwater was constructed beginning in the 1830s. Burlington's harbor was ideally situated, but it was exposed to strong winds from the northwest and the south. Burlington grew into the third-largest lumber port in the nation, and two reconstructed lighthouses on the city's waterfront now serve as reminders of the city's illustrious past. The lake became a major shipping route after the establishment of canals connecting it to the Hudson River, the Great Lakes, and north to the St.
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