There’s a lighthouse on the Washington waterfront.

It’s a screw-pile lighthouse, like the ones that came to prominence in 1840s England. The hexagonal building sits on pilings and is topped by a cupola. It looks just like the Pamlico Point lighthouse that guided boaters through the Pamlico Sound and Pamlico River for a century.

Unlike most screw-pile lighthouses, this one doesn’t sit on water and it’s a little smaller because it doesn’t include lodgings for the lighthouse attendant and his family. Instead, on the second floor, it includes a new dockmaster’s station with a 360-degree view of the Washington waterfront. On the first floor, it has restrooms for the public.

More importantly, Washington’s new lighthouse includes a lure for its many visitors, those who tie up at the city docks and make Washington their home for a few days on the way to somewhere else.

And being able to shower and do laundry might not be most people’s idea of a home away from home, but for the adventurous travelers, that’s exactly what it is.

Washington is in a unique place: located only 30 miles from the Intracoastal Waterway. Every year, twice a year, it becomes a temporary home for many traveling the waterways. These sailors traveling the Intracoastal Waterway — heading North in the summer and South in winter — often rely on weather windows, periods of good sailing conditions that will get them from point A to point B safely. But good weather windows can be scarce; sailors often wait days, or even weeks, at a time to find the ideal opportunity to head out to open seas. And if they’re waiting, they’re usually waiting in a town, at a dock, getting off the boat to eat out and shop. They are a valuable part of the tourism trade in Washington. So valuable that the City of Washington is putting into play a plan to shore up its maritime activities, starting with amping up the city’s lure to boaters.

“If you’re going to attract boaters, you need some of those nice facilities,” said John Rodman, director of planning and development. “For a long time, we didn’t have that.”

For sailors, having easily accessible laundry facilities is invaluable and while most boats outfitted for adventures have showers, they have their limitations: they’re often small; water pressure is not what you’d find in the average household shower; long showers aren’t really an option because the water supply is limited. For sailors, being able to take advantage of a full shower facility is a big draw.

The facilities are nice by any standards: natural, stone-look tile lines the floors and half of the walls, lining the shower floor to ceiling. The two shower/bathroom facilities — one is handicapped accessible — are reserved for the use of those paying to dock along the Washington waterfront. On the Stewart Parkway side of the building another keypad locked door provides access to a small laundry room with a washer and dryer offered free of charge.

Upstairs will be a home away from home for dock attendants and the eventual hiring of a dockmaster by the city. The six-sided building has large windows overlooking the entire waterfront. Beneath those windows, built in desktops provide workspace for the waterfront crew. French doors lead onto a steel-grid walkway surrounding the structure. Most surprising is the cupola that tops the building that houses an actual lighthouse lantern. Originally, the space was to be closed in, with a regular lamp on a switch, but through the efforts of Washington resident and U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary member Ray Midgett, an old, but working, lantern was donated by the Coast Guard. From dusk until dawn, the Washington lighthouse makes its presence known, flashing every three seconds.

“It just turned out so much better than what we originally had planned,” Rodman said.

Rodman said the lighthouse, while being a nod to the actual Pamlico Point lighthouse in design, acknowledges the waterfront’s current leisure-based functionality, as well as its past as a working waterfront.

“I think this sort of represents that: our maritime history,” Rodman said.

The lighthouse/dockmaster’s station came courtesy of a 2009 waterfront revitalization plan that mapped out green space, a commercial trade area and a center for maritime activities on the western end of the waterfront. But the project itself was paid for by a $200,000 grant from North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, a $50,000 grant from the Division of Marine Fisheries and $80,000 of matching funds from the city.

“The building was really a group effort,” Rodman said. “We certainly couldn’t have done it without the state agencies.”

A nod to the past, a waterfront management station, a working lighthouse, a service to the public, a home away from home for those on sailing adventures — the new lighthouse is a welcomed addition by many to the Washington waterfront.