Block Island, RI Photo - Block Island Light, Block Island, Rhode Island

Block Island Light. Block Island sits approximately 12 miles south-southeast off the coast of Rhode Island, squarely astride the coastal sealanes. The Block Island South East Lighthouse has stood atop Mohegan Bluff, high above the Atlantic Ocean, since 1874. The lighthouse and keepers quarters were meant to be showpieces for the U.S. Lighthouse Bureau. They were among the most elaborate built during the 1870s. South East light has been the focus of an intense preservation campaign. Local and national efforts forged a complex partnership to move the structure away from eroding bluffs and restore it to operation, with long-term preservation in mind.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.