A widow's walk, also known as a widow's watch or roofwalk, is a railed rooftop platform often having an inner cupola/turret frequently found on 19th-century North American coastal houses. The name is said to come from the wives of mariners, who would watch for their spouses' return, often in vain as the ocean took their lives, leaving the women widows. In other coastal communities, the platforms were called captain's walks, as they topped the homes of the more successful captains; supposedly, ship owners and captains would use them to search the horizon for ships due in port. * * *