Blackwell Island Light, now commonly called the Roosevelt Island Lighthouse, stands at the north end of Roosevelt Island as a rare American lighthouse operated by a city rather than the U.S. Lighthouse Board. Built by New York City in 1872 and designed under supervising architect James Renwick Jr., the roughly 50-foot Gothic Revival stone tower was constructed of island-quarried gneiss worked by penitentiary inmates. It served until about 1940 and later gained landmark protections. The lighthouse is closely tied to the island’s history as a center of public institutions, and despite enduring folklore about its construction, it remains most significant as a surviving municipal lighthouse and reminder of that institutional past.

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New York, New York · USA