The Cleveland Main Lighthouse (today no longer standing), which served as a model to the Gdańsk light, was erected in 1871 and was considered to be one of the most beautiful lighthouses of America. But why a twin of a Cleveland light in Gdańsk? It is an enduring mystery. One hypothesis links it with the visit of the City of Gdańsk delegation to the 1893 World Exposition in Chicago. During the visit the delegation would also have made an excursion to Cleveland, Ohio and struck by the beauty of the Cleveland light decided to have a twin built in Gdańsk. Is that how it happened? No one knows for sure, and it remains a historical puzzle, a challenge for a Sherlock Holmes of architecture...

From the beginning the Gdańsk Nowy Port Lighthouse served a triple purpose: that of a coastal lighthouse, a harbour pilots' tower and a time ball station. The latter, like its model in Greenwich, England, was an ingenious instrument which measured 5 feet in diameter, weighed 150 pounds and was dropped at noon every day to give a precise time signal to the captains of the ships lying at anchor in the Bay of Gdańsk to allow them to adjust their ships' chronometers. Their accuracy was essential to safe navigation - even a one-second inaccuracy produced a sizeable error in the positioning of the ship on the charts and often resulted in tragic accidents and shipwrecks.