Tiny and Cute, But Purposeful

This is the lighthouse at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island. The island is two miles long and a tenth of a mile wide, cutting the East River into two roughly-equal half-channels. That alone makes the need for lighthouses at its tip reasonably clear, but the conditions are actually worse than that. The river is not river, but a tidal strait, which changes direction with each change of the tides. The currents are quite strong and in the age of sail the river was considered to be dangerous unless you knew the currents and hidden rocks.

Under the circumstances, a large lighthouse wasn’t required, since the idea was to signal ships in the river a short distance away.