Giant Lighthouse Lens Returns ‘Home’ after a 50-Year Malibu Stay

Photo credit, MSN/Hans Laetz
IMAGE—Curator Kristen Heather shows off the seven-foot-high lens that is now back at the Point Femin Lighthouse and the photo of it that was a gift to the man who was its caretaker.

• Fresnel Gets Community Welcome

BY HANS LAETZ

A historic lighthouse lens that sat in an office window on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu for three decades has been returned to serve as the centerpiece of a beloved monument lighthouse in the small coastal community of San Pedro, and Malibu Realtor Louis T. Busch had a dinner thrown in his honor by its grateful residents.

Busch, a lifelong local resident and the son of the pioneer Malibu developer , was given the six-foot-high, crystal-and-brass artifact in the 1970s. The lens was in Malibu for the last 50 years, most recently keeping watch on Pacific Coast Highway traffic from Busch’s east Malibu real estate office. “I always felt that if we could prove where it came from, it would go back there,” Busch said.

“He was very sweet about it when we proved the case,” said lighthouse curator Kristen Heather, a City of Los Angeles park employee. Heather and Busch worked together to scour the National Archives in Washington, and found a 1912 picture of the Point Fermin lens.

“The screws on the side of the lens, at the brass cover, made the match,” Busch said. “Every single one of them was lined up exactly as in the photo, and at that point I conceded it was their lens,” Busch said.

“It was like a DNA match, and Mr. Busch offered the light back to Point Fermin,” Heather said. “We are so very thankful for Mr. Busch’s caretaking of the light for all these years.”

The 82-year-old was the toast of San Pedro last weekend, feted at a banquet for returning the lens. The formal dedication of its display Saturday at the 135-year-old lighthouse was a matter of great community pride, with a marching band, Model A parade, Army color guard in World War II dress uniforms and a grand unveiling of the centerpiece of the restored structure.

The lighthouse lens was cast in 1890, but first placed atop the three-story lighthouse on Point Fermin in 1912 to guide ships to the entrance to San Pedro Bay, and to Los Angeles Harbor after it was dredged.

The magnificent glass lens, called a fourth-class fresnel by experts on such things, magnified and reflected the meager light put off by an oil lamp sitting at its base. The entire structure rotated, casting out the only light visible to seafarers in the busy San Pedro Channel, warning of the treacherous rocks below, and beckoning to the welcoming harbor a mile to the east.

The oil lamp was replaced with an electric bulb in 1921, but the mechanical glass and brass device continued to rotate and blink until December, 1941, when fears of a Japanese attack extinguished the light and started the giant lens on its strange journey to Malibu.

Army soldiers dismantled the light and converted the lighthouse into an observation lookout for enemy bombers or ships. The lens was put on display at the Santa Monica Pier, but when storms flooded a museum there the lens was stored for safekeeping in a museum-worker’s house.

That house was sold, and with it the forgotten lens. Somehow the six-foot brass-and-glass tower came into the possession of an Encinal Canyon man named Cap Watkins who worked as a lifeguard in Malibu. His son gave it to Busch, along with the story that the light had been salvaged after being taken to the dump.

In 1971, Point Fermin Lighthouse celebrated its centennial and museum volunteers attempted to gently persuade Busch that he had their lens. Busch remained unconvinced, and the fresnel stayed in Malibu.

“I joined the United States Lighthouse Association to try to find out where my lens came from,” Busch recalled at his office Monday, a Christmas tree sitting where the lens reigned supreme for 30 years. “There were dozens of these things built, and they were discarded when lighthouses were electrified or modified.”

At the Friday dinner, all was forgiven and forgotten. Busch was hailed as the hero who saved the light, the Southland community celebrated, and the grateful members of the Point Fermin Lighthouse Society presented Busch with a near-lifesize canvas photo of the lens as a substitute for the real thing.

“I sat across from Mr. Busch at the dinner,” said society volunteer Henrietta Mosley, a lifetime resident of San Pedro. “He really didn’t want to give up that lens, but in the end, he was very good about it.”

Busch plans to hang the photo in his office. “The lens belongs at the lighthouse, and they did a good job displaying it,” he said. “I feel very good about it.”