The only marble lighthouse in the United States: a white Georgia-marble Art Deco spire at the island's eastern point, first lit in 1930 and still guiding freighters off Lake St. Clair after more than ninety years.
That white spire at the island's far point is the William Livingstone Memorial Lighthouse, and there is nothing else like it anywhere in the country. It is the only marble lighthouse in the United States. Carved from white Georgia marble into a clean Art Deco needle about fifty-eight feet tall, fluted like a column, it was first lit in nineteen thirty — designed by the Hungarian sculptor Geza Maroti, with Albert Kahn overseeing the construction. If that name rings a bell, it should: Kahn is the architect of the little aquarium back at the cultural campus. Same hand, two ends of the island. The light honors William Livingstone, a Detroit newspaperman and banker turned shipping power, who ran the Lake Carriers' Association for the last twenty-odd years of his life. And here's why that matters at this exact spot. Look off the point toward Lake Saint Clair — those giant lake freighters threading the head of the river are running on water Livingstone fought for years to deepen. He pushed the government to dredge and straighten the shipping lanes all through here, even the great locks up at Sault Sainte Marie, turning the Great Lakes into the freight highway of a continent — iron ore down from the north, coal and grain moving the other way. In its heyday this was called the busiest river on earth, with more tonnage moving past than the Panama and Suez canals put together, a freighter sliding by about every six minutes. Now, set your expectations honestly. The lighthouse stands a good half-mile out at the island's foot-trail tip — no road runs to it, but you can walk the Driker Trail out to its base another day if you like. The tower itself has been closed for years after stretches of vandalism, and a low fence rings the bottom, so it's admired from the outside, not from the top. But it is still a working aid to navigation, marking this tip of the island for the freighters more than ninety years on. You have reached the eastern end of Belle Isle. From here the loop curves back toward home along the wild shore, with two last natural stops waiting before the bridge.
