Park Friends Ask Residents to Restore Hudson River Lighthouse

Friends of Westchester County Parks are asking residents to “Turn on the Light” and help restore the Tarrytown Lighthouse. 

According to the organization’s website, the lighthouse need of serious repair. The Friends of Westchester County Parks is asking for donations to the lighthouse’s restoration fund, which will return the lighthouse to its original state with a replica of a fourth order Fresnel lens and turn it into a museum.

“But what is a lighthouse without a light?” asks the Friends of Westchester County Parks’ website. “The Lighthouse was originally equipped with a fourth order Fresnel lens, which was removed at the time of the Lighthouse’s decommissioning and cannot be traced." 

Donations, which can be made here, will go toward the creation of a full-scale replica of the lens with prisms that are machined and polished to Fresnel’s original formula.

“Your donation will help pay for the lens, allowing the Lighthouse to shine again,” says the website. 

According to LighthouseFriends.com, Congress authorized the building of the Tarrytown Lighthouse in 1847 to guide ships through shallow spots on the eastern shore of the Hudson River, north of New York City. It was originally supposed to be built near Tellers Point and Sing Sing Prison in Ossining.

The building of the lighthouse was delayed for about three decades until it was built in 1881 for $21,000 one fourth mile off of Kingsland Point in the river. It was known as the Kingsland Point Lighthouse and the Tarrytown Lighthouse, LighthouseFriends.com says.

There were 12 keepers, some who lived in the five story conical structure with their wives and children year-round. The property was only accessible by rowboat, until a footbridge was built in the 1970s.

The lighthouse was no longer need when the Tappan Zee Bridge was built, and it was decommissioned in 1964, according to the Friends of Westchester County Parks. Westchester County took it over from the General Services Administration in 1974 after residents rallied to save it. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

On the 100th anniversary of the Tarrytown Lighthouse’s first lighting it was opened up to the public, there are occasional tours of it now. Work to stabilize the lighthouse, paint it and replace its wooden floors was paid for by Westchester County and the Village of Sleepy Hollow. The project, around $800,000, should be finished in 2013, according to LighthouseFriends.com. 

Click here to read the full post in LighthouseFriends.com.

“Once more residents are rallying to save the Lighthouse, to preserve and restore this beacon from 1883; to set it up as a museum to showcase the Hudson River (with magnificent views from the lantern level balcony), the lifestyle of the lighthouse keepers and the Hudson River’s importance as a navigation route,” says Friends of Westchester County Parks’ website. “This restoration will protect and preserve our Lighthouse.”