As Superintending Engineer, he designed a unique lighthouse — in terms of location, construction materials, methods, hardships and costs — at the Spectacle Reef Light on Lake Huron. That light has been described as "the best specimen of monolithic stone masonry in the United States", and "one of the greatest engineering feats on the Great Lakes." Poe solved the logistics problem of building a lighthouse on the remote Stannard Rock in Lake Superior with the proposal to use all the costly apparatus and machinery used to build the Spectacle Reef Light. The exposed crib of the Stannard Rock Light is rated in the top ten engineering feats in the United States. Many of these lights were of Italianate architecture, a chief example being that of the Grosse Point Light.