Last season we succeeded in reaching our first major goal at the lighthouse: to provide light and ventilation. This season we started on the eight closet, room, and cabinet doors; they had been painted in various colors, and we removed and stripped them last, and we are restoring the hinges and doorknobs. We will sand and poly them, and put them back up in rooms we scraped and painted white. We have no photographs of the doors in the early days of the lighthouse and decided to leave them unpainted; the wood is beautiful, and the wood surfaces will be easy to maintain. Other doors on the agenda include north door to the kitchen; it was blown in by superstorm Sandy. Jeff Wollman’s Reicon crew put a temporary steel plate over the aperture, but it’s time to build a new, tight door and threshold.

The watch deck is one of the loveliest places at the lighthouse; it leads to the balcony and has eight round windows in the ceiling that cast light down from the light deck. Glen Miller’s crew had removed an old, rusty stove pipe that stretched across the ceiling, and the Coast Guard, NOAA, and the New York Wheel moved their equipment down to the deck below to make that deck easier to navigate. In the process, the Coast Guard installed a new LED light we dubbed “Little Green” and gave us the legacy light. It’s now part of our Robbins Reef Lighthouse: A Home in the Harbor exhibition.

Robbins Reef is a Noble Crew project, and they rock it. If you want to work out there, let us know—but remember we get to it by boat—Glen Miller donates the trips out and back—and there’s an 18’ ladder up to the promenade. When we go out, we do satisfying and pleasant work!

-Erin Urban

Robbins Reef Lighthouse

Noble Crew

Volunteer