Milestone project – lantern room panels complete!

It’s impossible to capture the feeling of having a 360 degree view in the lantern room again. This is truly a milestone project.

The original glass was mostly shot out by the time the DNR enclosed the lighthouse with plywood in the 1980’s. FILA upgraded the plywood in 2006 to protect the lantern room from further damage. A few years back, we inserted Lexan in some of the panels to give light and a tiny view. Over the past two years, the team of Barb, Marty & Tom have carefully removed the astrangals (vertical supports) and top and bottom stops, then cleaned and replaced them. Some were sufficiently damaged that they fashioned temporary wooden stops while taking samples back to to recreate proper metal ones. Almost every screw that had to be removed put up its own unique battle! For now, we’ve used Lexan panels, each custom fit since even though the openings may have been exactly the same back in 1867, they aren’t now. Our eventual goal would be to install original glass but in the interim we’ve made a huge improvement and learned a lot.

Here’s a sample from a couple different directions….

Photos: Barb Falkenhagen (taken from a video)

Many thanks to the lantern room team!