Old Harbor Light, Emmet Park

The Old Harbor Light in Emmet Park, Savannah, GA.

This former beacon light in Emmet Park, frequently and easily mistaken for an ordinary ornamental street lamp, was constructed on Savannah’s eastern bay in 1858 as a rear range light for the Fig Island Lighthouse.

It served to guide ships coming into the port at Savannah away from several vessels sunk in the river channel by the British during their Revolutionary War occupation of the city.

Generally known today as the Old Harbor Light, a misnomer applied by a journalist in the 1930s, the range light gave only brief service, decommissioned and later replaced by a different rear range light after changes in the channel brought an end to its utility.

Although it no longer served a navigational purpose, citizens became attached to the ornamental structure, preserving it in or very near to its original location, and twice restoring it.

The Old Harbor Light now stands as a reminder of Savannah’s history as a port, joined by a collection of large ships’ anchors around its base. A decorative gas light replaces its former guiding beam.

Bay Street’s Beacon Range Light

In the 1850s, Savannah embarked on several projects intended to boost its economic position. One of them was a program to improve the river channel in the hope of increasing the trade conducted through its port.

In 1779, during the course of the Revolutionary War, the occupying British forces had sunk six ships in the channel of the Savannah River below Fig Island, to defend the city against attack by French ships.

The Wrecks, as they were known, presented an impediment to ships entering the port at Savannah. A new structure to help ships navigate past them was required, to work in conjunction with the established lighthouse (since lost) on Fig Island.

In August 1855, the City of Savannah requested that the federal government’s US Lighthouse Board establish a beacon on Bay Street that would serve as a range light for ships traveling up the river at night. They acquiesced, appropriating $2000 for the new light. The city and state ceded a small area of land on which to put it to the United States, 20 feet square.

An ornamental shaft of cast iron, roughly 30 feet in height and painted dark green, was installed at the far end of Bay Street, on the grounds now known as Emmet Park. Its light used a sixth order Fresnel lens (one of the smallest available sizes), giving off a red beam.

The beacon range light was first lit in summer 1858. It was commended for its beauty as well as its utility.

Improvements to the Savannah River channel continued in the following decade. By 1869, the path taken by ships through the channel had changed and the rear range light was no longer useful. It was decommissioned.

In 1879, the Fig Island Light too had to be moved on account of the changes in the channel. The following year, a new rear range light to guide ships in conjunction with that lighthouse was installed in the tower of the Exchange Building on Bay Street, the site of the present City Hall.

The Old Harbor Light

For decades, the light stood unused on the eastern end of the Bay. By the 1920s, its condition had deteriorated. Local citizens involved in Savannah’s historical societies worked to save the relic of the city’s maritime history, persuading council to make the needed repairs. The restored structure was relit in November 1929.

The light acquired the name Old Harbor Light in 1932, given to it by a Chicago journalist reporting on the restoration and quoted in the Savannah Morning News. Properly, river lights are not known as harbor lights, but the name stuck nonetheless.

Under its new name, the Old Harbor Light has illuminated the eastern end of Emmet Park in the evenings, only briefly turned off, for defense reasons, during the years of World War II. It was relit in 1946.

In the 1950s, to commemorate the centennial of the erection of the light, members of the Trustees Garden Club developed the eastern end of Emmet Park as a garden. In 1958, a historic marker was erected to commemorate the Old Harbor Light and its place in Savannah’s history.

In the 1990s, the light was found to be severely corroded and at risk of collapse. In 2000, a $200,000 restoration project, mostly funded by CSX and the Savannah Morning News and part of a much wider project to restore dozens of Savannah’s historic monuments, repaired the light and cleaned the lens. It was relit, once more, on January 11 2001.

References

Dorothy H Stewart, 1993, The monuments and fountains of Savannah: a report on an internship for the Savannah Park and Tree Department

‘Savannah Harbor Light Lighthouse,’ Lighthousefriends.com