Lighthouses serve various purposes. They warn ships away from dangerous shores. They’re romantic and evocative and double as tourist attractions. And the one in the Hudson River, just south of the city of Hudson, cautions me that the train will soon be arriving at the station and it’s time to head for the exit.
Let me explain. Rushing is required because I prefer to sit in the Albany cars near the front of the train. They tend to be less crowded and the odds of scoring a window seat overlooking the passing river are better. However, only the doors on the rear cars open in Hudson, hence occasioning the rush.
However, my affection for the Hudson-Athens lighthouse isn’t simply because it serves as a personal navigation aid. It’s also a very pretty and uncharacteristic looking lighthouse if your concept of lighthouses is those towering cylindrical structures along rocky coastlines with the waves crashing below them.
The Hudson-Athens lighthouse might best be described as demure. It resembles nothing so much as the handsome, cozy Second Empire architecture style lightkeeper’s home that it once was, and that just happens to sit in the middle of the river. Built in 1874 its purpose was to steer mariners away from a sandbar sitting between the city of Hudson and the town of Athens.
The evocative lighthouse even made the Christmas cover of the 1946 Saturday Evening Post. The ever so slightly romanticized artwork depicted Emil Brunner, the fourth keeper of the lighthouse, rowing home through ice floes with a Christmas tree, wrapped gifts, and his young son Norman, as the rest of the Brunner clan eagerly await their return.
These days the lighthouse is fully automated but no less charming. So when I received an invitation from the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society to visit on the final tour of the season last weekend – the society assumed the deed and management of the structure from the Coast Guard in the year 2000 – I didn’t need much convincing.
On a cloudy day, the prevailing colors provided by the autumn foliage along the river’s near and distant shores, we embarked from the dock at Hudson Riverfront Park courtesy of the Hudson Ferry Co. Once we reached our destination, after a brief ride on the placid river, we were greeted by Bob Taylor, a lighthouse aficionado and our tour guide.
I was told that Bob, a retired Pittsfield, MA. high school math teacher, has visited 1,500 lighthouses throughout the world. In fact, he’d recently returned from Spain where he summited one that required climbing 461 steps. I asked him what it was about lighthouses that aroused his passion, assuming he’d wax poetic?
I was slightly disappointed by his answer but in retrospect it makes perfect sense. “I like to see how they work,” he told me.
I realized I had no idea how lighthouses work. So my visit doubled as a crash course in lighthouse design and maintenance. In the old days they were powered by an oil lamp, possibly whale oil in the case of the Hudson-Athens beacon, that was placed inside a sixth-order Fresnel lens. Sixth being the lowest brightness. It’s meant for casting its beam on harbors and rivers rather than the open ocean.
What’s a Fresnel lens? Named after its inventor, a Napoleonic era French physicist, it’s an ingenious device that uses circles of mirrors and prisms to exponentially increase the power the light source provides. There’s one on display at the lighthouse – it resembles a beautiful piece of sculpture – even though today’s illumination is provided by automated LED technology, no lightkeeper necessary.
The lighthouse, as might be expected, particularly given the rigors of winters on the Hudson, is in need of repair. Donations from the public, members of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society, and New York State grants have gone towards repairing the black slate mansard roof and making other fixes.
But the true challenges to the lighthouse’s survival lie underwater. Some of the two hundred wood piles that prop up the structure are deteriorating and erosion caused by turbulence from the ever larger barges and freighters that ply the river are eating away at the foundation’s mud packing.
However, help may be on the way. In a rare display of bipartisan unity, Preservation Society president Kristin Gamble told me that Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand together with Republican congressman Marc Molinaro are pushing to insert an estimated $7.5 million toward the lighthouse’s survival in the 2024 federal budget.
“At one point there were fourteen lighthouses along the Hudson,” Gamble said. “Now there are only seven.” And only two or three of them allow visitors. The Hudson-Athens lighthouse is the northernmost.
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the lighthouse retains its kitchen and coal-burning stove, though not the outhouse that once perched over the Hudson. However, there was a modest gift shop shelling t-shirts as tasteful as the lighthouse itself.
For further information or to support the society you can visit hudsonathenslighthouse.org. Regularly scheduled Saturday tours to the lighthouse resume next spring.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found be found on Substack.
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