Restoration Set To Begin on Cedar Island Lighthouse

The Cedar Island Lighthouse, located on the tip of Cedar Point in East Hampton and overlooks Sag Harbor, is going to get a facelift literally from top to bottom. 

The Long Island Chapter of the United States Lighthouse Society told Newsday that contractors donating their time will remove the lantern on the top of the lighthouse in order to refurbish it. 

This is the first step in the overall restoration of the lighthouse, which was built in 1868 on an offshore island to help whaling ships safely navigate to and from Sag Harbor. It was decommissioned in 1934, and sold. Phelan Beale, the husband of Edith Beale of "Grey Gardens" fame, owned it for a time. 

When the hurricane of 1938 ripped through the South Fork, it changed the shoreline and created the sand strip that visitors now stroll to get to the lighthouse.

Suffolk County bought it in the late 1960s to be apart of Cedar Point County Park, but the lighthouse has fallen into disrepair, particularly after a fire gutted the interior in 1974. 

For more on the preservation committee's plans, click here.