Saugerties, New York, November 19, 2001

Judy Berdy, meet Ruth Reynolds Glunt.

The historic lighthouse here, where Esopus Creek pours into the Hudson River, has lessons for Roosevelt Island.

By 1985, the United States Coast Guard had allowed this structure to fall into serious disrepair, just as today New York State has let Blackwell House deteriorate into a sorry shambles.

Passing Ulster County, navigation on the Hudson once suffered from a serious bend in the narrowed waterway.  Ships ran aground in the shallows.  For 167 years, there has been a warning light here, though the present lighthouse was not built until after the Civil War.

But by the end of World War II, the military had taken over such navigational aids, and Saugerties Lighthouse, by 1954 automated and rarely in need of human attention, was closed and sealed.  Eventually, dampness and neglect left the lighthouse just short of qualifying as demolition waste.

The Coast Guard pronounced the structure unworthy of the cost and effort required to save it and made plans to remove the house and leave – at most – the light.

Ruth Reynolds Glunt, a local historian, mounted a public opinion campaign that killed the idea of demolition.  But for years, the Coast Guard held onto the property, frustrating efforts to take it over.  Deterioration continued.

It wasn’t until 1985 that the Coast Guard gave up jurisdiction.  The property reverted to New York State, and enlightened legislators sponsored a bill that put the structure and adjacent wetlands in the hands of the newly-formed Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy.

That kicked off a fund-raising campaign that netted over $600,000 in grants and individual contributions.  By 1990, Saugerties Lighthouse was a traditional lighthouse once again – with a keeper serving as a bed-and-breakfast host and operator of a small museum and gift shop.  On the $60,000 to $70,000 income produced by these activities, the Lighthouse is self-sufficient.

It’s a blueprint that promises success on Roosevelt Island...  If only...

At the November meeting of the Roosevelt Island Operating Corporation’s Board of Directors, Judy Berdy – she’s president of the Roosevelt Island Historical Society – voiced the simple question that Ruth Reynolds Glunt once put to the Coast Guard.  Speaking of Blackwell House, Berdy asked, “Why don’t you give it to somebody who will take care of it?”

Board member Leo Kayser responded, “We need somebody we can convey it to.  Can we convey it to the Historical Society?”  What, others asked, would you do with it?  How would you take care of it?  Berdy promised to come back to the Board in January with a plan.

The Saugerties Lighthouse project, from conception to completion, demonstrated clearly how determined citizens can do a job far better than a distracted State government whose concerns focus broadly on the entirety of its political reach and are not well applied to the narrowly-focused care of an historic house.

So far, on Roosevelt Island, the only demonstration has been that RIOC – the State government – can’t do it.

Now comes the challenge:  Showing that citizens, working through a project-oriented organizations like the Saugerties Lighthouse Conservancy, can do the job.

Since New York State has failed so miserably, there is nothing to lose in trying – and everything to gain.

At Saugerties, Ruth Reynolds Glunt didn’t work alone.  Many helped.  There was Elise Berry, a young architect whose thesis project put several Hudson River lighthouses on the National Register of Historic Places.  And there were those area residents who saw the Saugerties Lighthouse as too important to leave in the lost dust of history.  Thus, it lives today.

Not so Ruth Reynolds Glunt.  She died some years back, but not before creating this legacy of inspired effort.  The inheritors of her realized dream are still there, of course, their minds and memories ready to be mined as Judy Berdy’s Roosevelt Island Historical Society takes on Blackwell House.

Godspeed to both.

DL