Est. 1873 · National Historic Landmark · Lady Elgin Disaster Memorial · Second-Order Fresnel Lens · National Register of Historic Places
The deadliest prompt for the Grosse Point station came on September 7, 1860, when the passenger steamer Lady Elgin sank in a storm approximately twelve miles northwest of Evanston after a collision with the lumber schooner Augusta. Close to 300 people drowned — at the time, the worst maritime disaster on the Great Lakes. Evanston residents who watched bodies wash ashore in the days that followed petitioned Congress for a lake light.
Congress appropriated $35,000 in 1871. The Army Corps of Engineers selected military architect Orlando Metcalfe Poe to design the station. Stonework on the keeper's dwelling began in September 1872; the 113-foot brick tower was completed in 1873. On March 1, 1874, the second-order Fresnel lens — manufactured in Paris by Henry-Lepaute — commenced operation. Its clockwork mechanism was powered by a sixty-pound weight suspended within the tower's double walls, requiring the keeper to wind it each night.
The Grosse Point Light was designated a National Historic Landmark on January 20, 1999, and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976. The U.S. Lighthouse Service transferred the property to the City of Evanston in 1935, and the Lighthouse Park District has maintained it as a public park and museum since then. Tower tours resumed in the mid-20th century and operate today on summer weekends.
In March 1915, a visiting assistant keeper named George Sheridan — who had come to the station to receive additional treatment for a condition described as melancholia — failed to return from a walk. His body was found hanging from a rafter in the station boathouse. Lighthouse Inspector Lewis Stoddard described Sheridan as "one of the best and most trustworthy employees in the lighthouse service." The boathouse, though no longer in active use, remains on the grounds.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grosse_Point_Light
- https://www.lighthousefriends.com/light.asp?ID=237
- http://www.grossepointlighthouse.net/
ApparitionsUneasy sensationsShadow figures near boathouse
The paranormal reputation of Grosse Point Lighthouse centers on two separate tragedies. The first is the 1860 Lady Elgin wreck — nearly 300 dead within sight of the Evanston bluffs, a disaster that would not have occurred had the lighthouse already existed. Tour guides note that the lighthouse was built specifically because so many people died where it now stands.
The second is the March 1915 death of George Sheridan, a visiting assistant keeper who had come to the station seeking treatment for melancholia. His body was found hanged in the boathouse, a structure that still stands on the grounds. Present-day tour participants report uneasy feelings near the boathouse, and some accounts describe a figure visible in or near the structure that does not respond to approach.
Neither account has been documented by the lighthouse's operating organization, which presents the paranormal reputation as local folklore rather than institutional history. What is documented: the keeper's death by suicide in the boathouse in 1915, and the drowning of hundreds off the shore in 1860. The reported sightings appear in regional paranormal literature and have made Grosse Point one of several Lake Michigan lighthouses with a noted haunted reputation.
Notable Entities
George Sheridan (assistant keeper, d. 1915)
