Posted on 08/21/2007 5:09:31 PM PDT by Coleus
Standing atop a pile of rocks in Lower New York Bay nearly four miles north of Sandy Hook, the faded Romer Shoal Lighthouse has a colorful past and an uncertain future. The 109-year-old lighthouse was recently honored with a designation as an historic site on both the national and state registries. But that doesn't ensure it will even remain in New Jersey. While the sparkplug-like, 54-foot-tall lighthouse still throws its signal of two white flashes every 15 seconds as far as 15 miles to sea, it is a forlorn sight.
Dirty paint -- top-half red, bottom-half white -- is peeling all over the building. Rust from saltwater scars its cast iron sides. The windows are boarded like an abandoned inner-city rowhouse and its only entrance is covered by a heavy vandal-proof metal door. The dock is crumbling. With the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the New York skyline visible in the distance, a feeling of isolation surrounds the lighthouse. The only signs of life are large, spooky-looking black-feathered cormorants, who flap their bony 27-inch wings to dry them in the breeze.
Nobody expects this spot at the edge of New Jersey will go dark because a light is needed to warn against the surrounding shoals and mark the Swash Channel. But officials say the Coast Guard, which doesn't consider maintaining lighthouses a priority after 9/11, could unload Romer Shoal to a private preservation group as early as next year. It also could be dismantled and moved to a planned National Lighthouse Museum on Staten Island.
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
I have an old engraving of the Sandy Hook Lightship. We have been unable to find any other like it. It's signed by GS Walters and I assume the engraver in the other corner. It has a little sketch of what appeards to be a sandpiper near it's lower edge.
Why not leave it where it is and sell it as a private residence with the covenant that it be maintained as a working lighthouse? Someone will buy it and maintain it properly just for bragging rights.
I agree, there are a few light houses like that already. The Government could even pay them a stipend to assist in maintaining the function which would be cheaper than the Government fully maintaining it.
We made one of our local Lighthouses (Sodus Bay) into an Historic site. I applied to be the keeper (curator). Then I started THINKING about ghosts and was glad when it didn’t pan out.
Yes, that is true. And we have enough non-taxable non-profits taking real estate and land off the market, as it is.
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