As depicted in the photograph, this initial Edgartown lighthouse featured a glass lantern room protruding from the middle of the gabled roof of the Keeper's residence. This lantern room contained a fixed white light that was visible for about 14 miles.

The lighthouse in the photograph was destroyed in the Hurricane of 1938. In 1939, the United States Coast Guard demolished the building and installed an 1881 vintage cast-iron tower relocated from Ipswich Rear Range Light.[7] When reconstructed at the mouth of Edgartown Harbor, the relocated conical tower was fitted with the fourth-order Fresnel lens, electrified, and automated.