Notes for an upcoming trip

The only two Martello towers remaining in the United States are located in Key West and were intended to be part of the island’s eastern defenses. They would be built on the south shore of Key West to provide defensive support for Fort Zachary Taylor. Each tower had 8-foot-thick granite walls. The structures were patterned after the impregnable early 19th-century Mortella watchtower of coastal Italy. Martelo towers have several features including a first floor with an entrance doorway and two small windows. Inside ammunition and supplies were stored on the ground floor known generally as the magazine. In most towers a cistern was sunk into the foundation to store clean water. The middle floor was the living quarters for the garrison‘s men and officers and was divided into several rooms with fireplaces for cooking and heating. Built into the wall was a stone staircase leading up to the roof where a cannon was mounted on a rotating oak carriage. A massive brick pillar rose from the foundation to the roof to support the weight of the gun and provide the base for the central pivot around which the gun carriage could turn 360° (see diagram below).

Martello towers were traditionally round. In addition, the European towers were generally stand alone structures built along seacoasts such as the one show below at Sandpoint Beach on Dublin Bay in Ireland and in the diagram above.

The towers of Key West, however, have a different design. They are square and built inside a battery or small fort. In the 1836 design below of the two Key West Martellos the structure called “Citadel” is the Martello which is surrounded by what is called a fort in the first figure and an advanced battery in the second figure.

In 1862, the Union military began construction on two fortifications, the East and West Martello Towers. The West Martello Tower was built about one and one-half miles east of Fort Taylor, and the East Martello Tower is located two miles east of the West Tower. Construction continued throughout the Civil War years. The masonry work was substantially completed by the end of the war, but the outer works were never finished and no armaments were installed. The wartime development of rifled artillery rendered such masonry fortifications obsolete, and by 1866 construction of the original plans was suspended. Of the two fortifications, the East Martello Tower has retained more of its Civil War appearance and has essentially survived in the form of its original construction, while the West Martello Tower was modified during the Spanish American War and later periods.

East Martello Tower- 3501 South Roosevelt Boulevard, www.kwahs.com/martello.htm

West Martello Tower- 1100 Atlantic Boulevard, www.keywestgardenclub.com