Palmers Island Light, New Bedford, MA, 1906

About this postcard

The view shows Palmers Island Light, a conical whitewashed stone tower with a dark lantern room and gallery railing, standing on a small grassy island at the mouth of New Bedford Harbor. A low stone seawall and breakwater run off to the left, and the city waterfront and rooftops line the horizon at sunset. The light marked the entrance to a harbor long associated with whaling and fishing. New Bedford was the center of the American whaling fleet in the mid-nineteenth century; by the early twentieth century, whaling had faded and the waterfront depended more on fishing and coastal trade. The granite tower is a mid-nineteenth-century structure that still stands at the harbor entrance.