place

Fort Tompkins Light

1828 establishments in New York (state)Lighthouses completed in 1828Lighthouses completed in 1873Lighthouses in Staten Island
Forttompkins
Forttompkins

Fort Tompkins Light was a lighthouse located on Staten Island, New York City, on the west side of the Narrows in New York Bay.The lighthouse was established by Fort Tompkins Military Base in 1828 to guide ships to Staten Island. The lighthouse did not keep records due to its close proximity to land. Consequently, very little record survives beyond those kept by the lighthouse board. The Board archives illustrate the precarious location of the lighthouse. On more than one occasion the lighthouse became a target and various explosions caused the glass in the lantern room to break. They moved the lighthouse in 1871 out of battery range and it was no longer near the water. Its first light in the new location was in 1872. A fourth order Fresnel lens was installed in 1900. The light was an alternate flashing red and white with an interval between flashes of 10 seconds. Three years later the lighthouse was deactivated. The lighthouse's duties were given to the Fort Wadsworth Light in 1903. Soon after, the lighthouse was abandoned. It no longer exists. The tower stood on a Victorian-style home with a white dwelling, Mansard roof and a black lantern.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Fort Tompkins Light (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Fort Tompkins Light
South Weed Road, New York Staten Island

Geographical coordinates (GPS) Address Nearby Places
placeShow on map

Wikipedia: Fort Tompkins LightContinue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.6057 ° E -74.0539 °
placeShow on map

Address

Battery Weed

South Weed Road
10305 New York, Staten Island
New York, United States
mapOpen on Google Maps

Forttompkins
Forttompkins
Share experience

Nearby Places

Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge
Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge

The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge ( vər-ə-ZAH-noh; also referred to as the Verrazzano Bridge, locally as the Verrazzano, and formerly as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge or Narrows Bridge) is a suspension bridge connecting the New York City boroughs of Staten Island and Brooklyn. It spans the Narrows, a body of water linking the relatively enclosed New York Harbor with Lower New York Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only fixed crossing of the Narrows. The double-deck bridge carries 13 lanes of Interstate 278: seven on the upper level and six on the lower level. The span is named for Giovanni da Verrazzano, who in 1524 was the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor and the Hudson River. Engineer David B. Steinman proposed a bridge across the Narrows in the late 1920s, but plans were deferred over the next twenty years. A 1920s attempt to build a Staten Island Tunnel was aborted, as was a 1930s plan for vehicular tubes underneath the Narrows. Discussion of a tunnel resurfaced in the mid-1930s and early 1940s, but the plans were again denied. In the late 1940s, urban planner Robert Moses championed a bridge across the Narrows as a way to connect Staten Island with the rest of the city. Various problems delayed the start of construction until 1959. Designed by Othmar Ammann, Leopold Just, and other engineers at Ammann & Whitney, the bridge opened on November 21, 1964, and a lower deck in 1969 to alleviate high levels of traffic. The New York City government began a $1.5 billion reconstruction of the bridge's two decks in 2014. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge has a central span of 4,260 feet (1.30 km; 0.81 mi). It was the longest suspension bridge in the world until it was surpassed by the Humber Bridge in the United Kingdom in 1981. The bridge has the 18th-longest main span in the world, as well as the longest in the Americas. When the bridge was officially named in 1960, it was misspelled "Verrazano-Narrows Bridge" due to an error in the construction contract; the name was officially corrected in 2018. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge collects tolls in both directions, although only westbound drivers paid a toll from 1986 to 2020 in an attempt to reduce traffic congestion.