South Bass Island Lighthouse

South Bass Island Light is a Queen Anne-style lighthouse on the southern end of its eponymous island in Lake Erie. Once supplied with a 4th-order Fresnel lens that used burning oil to light the sky, the lighthouse was built in 1897 and was custom made with the light tower constructed into the frame of the house. The Ohio State University, the only university to own a lighthouse, purchased the building in 1967. Today, it is managed by Stone Laboratory and the Ohio Sea Grant College Program at OSU. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 1990. To the west of the lighthouse is Green Island, which once had a light tower and was also operated by the light keepers of the South Bass Island lighthouse. Light towers were built on the Lake Erie islands to prevent shipwrecks from occurring during poor weather conditions.