Any account of the North Point Lighthouse inevitably becomes at least a partial history of the port of Milwaukee. The latest book on our city in Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series is a profusely illustrated chronicle, beginning with early photos and maps of the harbor. A beacon on the east end of what is now Wisconsin Avenue was marked on a 1935 city map. Ten years later the first lighthouse was erected on the city's North Point, manned by a keeper with a cork leg. The lighthouse was later incorporated into Frederick Law Olmstead's landscape design for Lake Park. After it was decommissioned in 1994, the North Point beacon could have gone to the wrecking ball like the city's old Coast Guard Station, if not for the efforts of preservationists who restored the shapely structure to its original luster.
