A group of preservationists is trying to save a more than century old Hudson River lighthouse that’s in danger of crumbling into the water.
The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse in Hudson, NY, 100 miles north of New York City, is one of 11 places on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s most endangered list.
The 1874 lighthouse is starting to shift, and some of the 200 wooden pilings which hold it above water are deteriorating, leading to cracks in the brick building and its granite foundation.
“All four corners will begin to come down, and then you’ll have a pile of rock in the middle. And ultimately it will topple into the river,” Van Calhoun of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said.
The society is now scrambling to raise funds for what may be a $10 million-dollar project to install a submerged steel curtain around the lighthouse, which is still in use, along with an automated LED beacon.
The steel curtain, which would measure 100 feet in diameter, would protect the lighthouse from one of the challenges of the modern era — the massive propellers of large commercial ships.
The propellers erode the mud around the lighthouse’s pilings, which ultimately exposes them to the water, allowing its wood to deteriorate.
“They create a turbulence that’s like being inside a washing machine. And that turbulence actually comes underneath and pulls — churns up — the soil underneath us and sucks it away,” Calhoun said.
With Wires