Sunday, January 27, 2013

St. Augustine Lighthouse

This blog was almost abandoned, but I'm resurrecting it for now! In over two decades of living in Florida and countless visits to St. Augustine, starting with school field trips and then trips on my own, I had never been to the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Visible from downtown, the St. Augustine Light is located on Anastasia Island and was built in 1874.

One of the fascinating parts of lighthouses to me is always the design of the stairs leading to the top. There seems to be a lot of variation from lighthouse to lighthouse. Some, like the Ponce Inlet lighthouse have staircases that spiral around the walls of the building all the way to the top. Others like the Cape Florida Light in Key Biscayne have variations on the spiral staircases, only based around a central column rather than attached to the walls. On the St. Augustine Light, the stairs spiraled up around half the building, with landings on the other half. I don't ever remember being in a lighthouse with a staircase designed quite like this.
Once the stairs were all climbed, there was a nice view of the top of the lighthouse from the balcony just below.
There were rather impressive and decorative braces holding up the observation platform.
 
View of downtown St. Augustine.
The lighthouse made some nifty looking shadows on the beach.
I liked this house under the lighthouse!

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