Lighthouses have long exerted an emotional pull on those who visit them and the lighthouse that guides ships into the city of Port Washington’s harbor is no exception. Built in 1935 and located at the end of a 2535-foot-long breakwater that was completed the year before, the unmanned Art Moderne Style-influenced concrete and steel Port Washington North Breakwater Light is one of eight Great Lakes lighthouses that were built between 1934 and 1950 to a standard design developed by the U.S. Lighthouse Service specifically for use on the Great Lakes and it is one of only two of the eight that today’s visitors can access on foot.

The impetus for the lighthouse’s construction came when in 1930 The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Co. announced that it had purchased a large parcel of land on the lake shore in Port Washington just south of the harbor’s already existing 1888 shipping channel as the site for a new $30,000,000 steam-electric power plant. In order to bring ships carrying coal for the new plant safely into port, a new, much larger harbor was needed and building the new North Breakwater was a key component in the creation of this enlarged harbor. At the same time, the construction of the new breakwater also created an opportunity to replace the harbor’s existing 1889 pierhead light with a larger, up-to-date structure that was more in tune with the needs of the greatly increased shipping traffic that the harbor was now going to be handling. By the end of 1935, both the breakwater and the new lighthouse were in place and they are still serving their original functions today.