Little Red Lighthouse in Manhattan to receive $13 million upgrade

A $13 million upgrade is coming to a favorite Upper Manhattan landmark – the Little Red Lighthouse.

First owned by the U.S. Coast Guard and later immortalized through a children's novel, the lighthouse will be restored by The Historic House Trust of New York City, New York City Parks, and Henson Architecture, in part to become more accessible to the public in the hopes of welcoming more visitors to the centuries-old site.

"They can get 300 people up this lighthouse in a day. And our goal is just to increase that number, make it safer for larger groups to come up, create a larger area for people with mobility disabilities," said Giulietta Fiore, executive director of the Historic House Trust. 

Preservation architects at Henson Architecture say that the intent of the project is to keep the soul and aesthetic of the lighthouse as it was historically, while improving what has deteriorated over time, particularly from water infiltration and the cast-iron materials of the lighthouse.

"[Cast iron] is a material that was used quite a bit in the late 1800s, but you have to take care of it," said Cory Trembath Rouillard, of Henson Architecture. "The way it rests, the way it corrodes, the way it behaves over time. And there are a lot of layers of paint here ... There are places where we know that there is damage, and then we're going to need to take care of that."

Tucked away in Fort Washington Park, the lighthouse was first built in the 1800s on the opposite side of the Hudson River in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. It was deconstructed and moved to its current location in 1921. Keepers used a 1,000-pound fog signal and flashing red light to guide ships through the night, but it became obsolete ten years later when the George Washington Bridge was built in 1931, bringing new light to the waters below. The Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse and had initially planned to put it for sale in 1948. 

"Thousands of schoolchildren across New York City who had read 'The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge' book in the 1950s wrote in to the Parks Department and wrote in to the city and asked the city to save the lighthouse," Fiore said. "The story of the Little Red Lighthouse is the story of New Yorkers coming together to save this place. It's such a story of preservation in New York City, and it really speaks to the heart and the vibrancy of the people who really want to make their city kind of their own." 

The project is expected to take at least three years.

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