Learning from Lighthouses

Even the very young, who don’t know the stories of Grace Darling and other heroic lighthouse keepers’ daughters, respond to the romantic appeal of lighthouses.  On Saturday, April 6, at the Rye Meeting House, a full house -- including a five-year old boy who had built a model lighthouse with a working light -- gathered to hear architects Walter Sedovic and Jill Gotthelf discuss and show beautiful slides of “Beacons of Sustainability: Lighthouses of the Eastern Seaboard.”

The illustrated talk launched a new series of lectures sponsored by the non-profit Committee to Save the Bird Homestead, which operates the Rye Meeting House, entitled “After the Storm: Toward a More Resilient Shoreline.”  Co-sponsors of the series -- which is exploring sustainability issues facing Sound shore communities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy -- include the Long Island Sound Study (LISS), Save the Sound, and the Friends of Read Wildlife Sanctuary.  The series is funded in part by a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Sedovic and Gotthelf have been leaders in sustainable preservation.  Anne Stillman, president of the Committee to Save the Bird Homestead, introduced the series and its two inaugural speakers by quoting an article in Rye Magazine (Fall 2011) on how the Homestead and Meeting House withstood Tropical Storm Irene in August 2011.  Photojournalist Suzy Allman observed then, “the old properties don't just endure. They stand as lessons in living with nature.”

  Sedovic and Gotthelf recognize that lighthouses --  perched on the very edges of coasts and waterways -- stand, as Allman wrote of the Meeting House and Homestead, “at the cutting edge of conservation, architecture, and how we respond to climate change.” The two architects have restored several lighthouses and are proud that at least half of those they have worked on have been re-commissioned.  

Lighthouses, built to withstand high seas and winds, serve as “beacons of sustainability” in the contemporary era of super storms.  While on the job, Sedovic and Gotthelf have stayed overnight in lighthouses.  Sedovic described that experience as total immersion in the harsh environment lighthouses endure:  “You see the weather coming at you, so strong!”   Two slides illustrated lighthouses’ and lighthouse keepers’ hard lives:  a Great Lakes lighthouse almost hidden under gigantic frozen waves and icicles, and a Georgia lighthouse completely toppled by Hurricane Katrina.

 When a lighthouse is threatened, Gotthelf added, a community has three courses of action, which certainly can be applied to other structures, too.  Either a community can defend a lighthouse against the elements, or it can engage with them, or it can retreat from them by moving the building farther away from them.

 The town of Huntington on Long Island chose to defend the Huntington Harbor lighthouse, originally built on shore on timber and then floated into the harbor, where it rested on a concrete foundation.  Defense came in the form of riprap, a ring of rocks surrounding the base.  But the riprap is shifting and no longer fully protecting the structure.  The community will have to decide on a new strategy.

 Another lighthouse, Morris Island Lighthouse in the harbor of Charleston, SC, began to lose its natural defenses in the 1800s, when the city built jetties out into the harbor to protect homes and businesses along the shore.  Along with several smaller buildings, the lighthouse had stood on an island created by movement of sand.  The jetties took away the island’s ability to collect sand, and today a lighthouse that was able to engage with storms stands alone  -- without its island. 

Some members of the audience had sailed off New Rochelle past Execution Rocks, whose lighthouse is visible from the Throgs Neck Bridge.   Below the light shaft, tides flow through the building and then back out again.  This structure has given rise to apocryphal tales of chained prisoners left to drown – but does offer a useful model for other coastal buildings that could engage with tides, possibly structures on durable spider legs that let water pass through.

 In Rhode Island, Block Island’s Southeast Lighthouse had to retreat from the elements.  It stood on Mohegan Bluffs – but because of erosion, it was close to teetering over the cliffs.  Sedovic said that moving the lighthouse farther back  “will postpone by 75 years” what to do next as erosion continues. 

At least one lighthouse hasn’t moved but its location has changed nonetheless.  On Fire Island in the Great South Bay, a lighthouse was built originally at the island’s western end.  But because of littoral drift – waves pick up sand at one end of the island and move it to the other – the lighthouse is now 5.4 miles from where it was built. 

In response to a question from the youngest member of the audience – “What makes lighthouses so special?” – Sedovic said that these buildings are so striking because they’re “right on the seaside.  Some have stripes or ribbons, some are gray, some red  -- they’re almost like cartoon characters.  And of course, they’ve always been special to mariners; they save peoples’ lives.”

Now the original lifesavers may help Sound shore communities withstand or recover from severe weather.  Situations differ from shore to shore, Sedovic said, and as sea levels rise, shore communities must share information.

Several examples of the many lighthouses the two architects have restored can be viewed on the Long Island Sound Study Web site:

http://longislandsoundstudy.net/2013/03/beacons-of-sustainability-lighthouses-of-the-eastern-seaboard/

Science reporter Ann Marie Cunningham, who grew up in Rye, has climbed the steps to the crown of the Statue of Liberty – a lighthouse at the entrance to New York harbor.