Tourists who partake of the free ferry ride to Staten Island should delay getting right back on the boat to Manhattan, and instead take a short walk outside to the National Lighthouse Museum.

Located just southeast of the ferry terminal, the Lighthouse Museum is rather modest in stature, occupying a small building on what was once the United States Lighthouse Service General Depot. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the depot was responsible for supplying all of the lighthouses in the US Lighthouse Service's third district, stretching from Albany to the Massachusetts border and down to Sandy Hook. As advances in technology made lighthouses largely obsolete, the depot eventually shut down by 1965.

The buildings now stand empty, with the only occupant being the museum inside Building 11, the former foundry.…