The race is on to save a 150-year-old NY lighthouse from crumbling into the Hudson River

HUDSON, NY — A race is on to save a 150-year-old lighthouse from collapsing into the Hudson River.

Wooden pilings beneath Hudson-Athens Lighthouse are deteriorating and the structure, built in the middle of the river when steamboats still plied the water, is beginning to shift. Cracks are visible in the brick building and granite foundation.

While there are other endangered lighthouses around the country, the threat to this lighthouse 100 miles 161 kilometers north of New York City is so great that the National Trust for Historic Preservation has placed Hudson-Athens on its list of the nation’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Sites for 2024. Advocates say that unless action is taken soon, another historic lighthouse could be lost in the years to come.

“All four corners will come down, and then you have a pile of rocks in the middle. And eventually it will fall into the river,” said Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society during a recent visit.

The society is scrambling to raise money to erect a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, an ambitious preservation project that could cost up to $10 million. Their goal is to save a prominent symbol of the river’s centuries-long history as a busy waterway. Although the Hudson River was once home to more than a dozen lighthouses, only seven remain standing.

Elsewhere there is a similar story of lost history.

There were about 1,500 lighthouses in the United States in the early 20th century. Only about 800 remain, said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society. He said many of the structures deteriorated after they were automated, a process that became increasingly common in the 1940s.

“Lighthouses are built to be maintained by people,” Gales said. “And when you shut them down and take the human element out of them, that’s when they really start to deteriorate.”

The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse began operating in 1874 off the coast of the city of Hudson, and was eventually named in part for the village of Athens on the other side of the river. It was built to prevent boats from running aground on nearby mudflats, which were submerged at high tide.

“There were shipwrecks because they couldn’t see the sandbar, and that’s why this lighthouse was put in the middle of the river, unlike most lighthouses on the coast,” said Kristin Gamble, president of the conservation society.

The lighthouse is still in use, but now with an automated LED beacon. The Conservation Society owns the building and maintains it as a museum.

The last full-time keeper, Emil Brunner, retired in 1949 when the lighthouse was automated. He lived there with his family for much of his tenure. One of his daughters remembered rowing to school and in winter walking across the ice on a safe path marked by her father’s tobacco juice stains on the frozen surface. Brunner is also depicted in a 1946 Saturday Evening Post cover painting rowing with a child, Christmas presents and a tree in tow, while his wife and other children await their arrival at the lighthouse.

Visitors who are taken to the lighthouse today can explore the lighthouse keeper’s quarters, which are modest but offer river views from every window. And they can climb the narrow spiral staircase to the tower for a unique panorama of the river and the Catskill Mountains to the west.

Roofing work on the lighthouse is underway this summer, but repairs to the building will ultimately mean little unless workers address damage to some of the 200 wooden piles embedded in mud that keep the lighthouse afloat. The supporting structure has weathered 150 years of currents and ice. But large commercial vessels of the modern era — with their big propellers — bring new problems.

“They create a turbulence that’s like sitting in a washing machine. And that turbulence actually gets underneath and pulls — churns — the ground up underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said. “There are even boulders the size of your car that are 100 feet out of the river that used to be right next to us.”

The underwater movement washes away mud around the poles, exposing them to water. And that accelerates the decay of the wood. Engineers estimate that the structure could tip over in three to five years, which Gamble says would be “the beginning of the end.”

The proposed ring of corrugated steel would protect the structure from that turbulence. The 100-foot (31-meter) diameter circle, which would extend above the waterline, would be filled in and covered with a deck, increasing the area around the lighthouse.

The preservation group is optimistic about securing federal money to help pay for the project. Both New York senators, Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, support the effort, as does local Republican congressman Marc Molinaro.

While the project is expensive, Gamble said it would not only save the lighthouse from being lost over time, but it would also protect the 19th century lighthouse for future generations.

“We basically need a 100-year solution,” she said.