Photograph by United States Coast Guard, Public domain. Via
Wikimedia Commons.
South Bass Island Light
Built in 1895. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in
1990. A historic map-sheet match is not published yet. The record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
From the record
“South Bass Island Light is a lighthouse on the southern end of its eponymous island in Lake Erie. It was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 5, 1990 and is thought to be the only lighthouse in the United States owned by a university - Ohio State.”
Wikipedia article South Bass Island Light, CC BY-SA 4.0.
one of 21 National Register listings in Ottawa County · listed in 1990 · category: Structure · built in 1895.
National Register reference number.90000473- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
Specimens collected near this property
12 of 7,484 shown
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. Museums hold 7,484 specimens
collected within 10 miles of South Bass Island Light between 1871 and
1975: 6,323 Animalia, 1,042 Plantae, 105 Fungi, 9 Chromista, 5 Unrecorded. 12 distinct Species records are shown.
Collected by A. D. Selby, A. J. Pieters, A. Lewis and others. Each is a
physical object with a catalogue
number, and each entry opens the museum's record. This is what was
collected and kept, not a survey of what lives here - nothing can be
concluded from a species being absent.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
From the nomination file
1,837 words on record
When this property was proposed for the
National Register, someone wrote the case for it: what the building is,
and why it matters. That document is a federal record in the public domain.
It is quoted below word for word, never summarised. The text was read off the scanned case file by machine, so the
occasional stray character is the recogniser's and the 1970s
typewriter's.
Statement of significance
Certitying official has considered the significance of this property in relation to other properties: Applicable National Register Criteria Areas of Significance (enter categories from instructions) Period of Significance Significant Dates State significance of property, and justify criteria, criteria considerations, and areas and periods of significance noted above. Point, the southwest tip of South Bass Island, the largest of the style red brick light tower with attached keeper's dwelling built at the height of the island's popularity as a summer reservation to the Board of Trustees of Ohio State University, consists of the brick light tower and attached keeper's dwelling (1897), a former barn and chicken house (1899) now used garage, and an oil storage house (1899).
Although the lighthouse and barn have been remodeled, they retain their essential integrity and the complex conveys the feeling and association of an island light station at the turn of the century.
and "Light Stations on the Great Lakes, 1819-1939." Transportation 1897 Engineering Engineers See continuation sheet Federal Government transferred the two-acre lighthouse contexts of "Transportation and Commerce on Lake Erie,1818-1936" This property meets the requirements for registration set forth which operates a biological research laboratory on the island and Criterion A for its association with the associated historic From 1897 until 1963,the South Bass Island Light marked Parker's Jnationally Lstatewide Elocally Criteria Considerations (Exceptions) Signiticant Person changed to alternately flashing white and red) guided vessels superseded by an automated light mounted on a steel skeleton tower erected southeast of the old lighthouse.
In 1967, the Ohio."The South Bass Island Light is significant under in the multiple property documentation form "Light Stations of through the South Passage around the Lake Erie Islands.In 1963, uses the lighthouse as a residence for faculty.The property resort.A fixed red light 1926,its characteristic was 9.
Quoted from the National Register nomination
for reference 90000473, 16 pages, held by the National Archives in Record
Group 79. See the
catalogue record.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Specimens. Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), https://www.gbif.org/. Only records licensed CC0 or CC BY are used. Records licensed CC BY-NC are excluded because this site carries advertising. Images are checked individually and any whose licence is non-commercial, no-derivatives or unreadable is refused.
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