The Little Red Lighthouse — Attraction in New York

Ah, New York, the cobbled lobster that tore open this stucco heart! I am returned.

What joy, the stench of these sidewalks in a summer rain! How blissfully I stuck my scalp out the window of that illustrious bus as it crashed across the George Washington bridge, how deeply the breath of the toll-taker singed my nostrils as we rushed through without paying, how lauded and memorial the memories of this sacred land's geography I had so callously abandoned for the wilds.

Bliss is a four letter word best spelt wrong, and nowhere is it so sacrosanct as on the shores of the mighty 5th Avenue, with its glorious holes below my feet. What charms could be satisfied by the manservant who'd abandoned me that couldn't be sated by any horse sprung free from its fetters of roaming hills and mountains to jog gloriously round Central Park? Why, I don't even remember Constable's name. How the mighty have fallen and how the pissed-upon dare to rise!

For it is within us all to free ourselves, and no more than in this great city can we become the shadows of our future disappointments, belying the fates to bellow once again, "We're here, we're queer, get used to sober Thanksgiving!"

Dare I say tears flooded mine eyes as the noble New York pigeon flew off to the sky, flooding my open arms with its excrement and the following testament to the power of this city to change a man -

There come days when I need to be human So deeply and so badly that I split Apart. I tear along perforated Lines of where I've been convinced I must fit And there is no cure for the malady Of being whole. There is no tragedy Beyond the reality being real. There is but hope and its own gravity But I am afraid that this lives outside Me and I am the one to be denied.

Maybe it's time to let the...

Tucked under the George Washington Bridge, the Little Red Lighthouse stands there like it forgot to grow up. Bright red against the gray steel above it, a stubborn little holdout from another century. The bridge gets all the glory, but this thing has more soul. You can walk right up, touch the paint, feel the hum of traffic overhead like a restless heartbeat.

It’s not big. You’ll be done looking at it in five minutes. But that’s the trick. It’s the pause. It’s the “how the hell did I not know this was here” moment. And it will stay with you longer than most landmarks that charge an entry fee.

Morning Start in Washington Heights with a coffee from Forever Coffee Bar on 181st. Walk west toward the river. The streets get quiet. You’ll pass park benches with old men in baseball caps and pigeons that know their names.

Midday Follow the Hudson River Greenway into Fort Washington Park. The lighthouse will sneak up on you. Bring a sandwich and sit on the rocks nearby. Watch the barges move slow up the Hudson. The bridge towers above like a giant who doesn’t notice the little red thing at its feet.

Afternoon Walk north along the trail. If you’ve got the legs for it, keep going to Fort Tryon Park and the Cloisters. It’s a good way to stretch the day and pretend you planned a grand cultural outing.

Evening Head back toward 181st. Grab tacos from Refried Beans or a drink at Le Chéile. Sit by the window and look out at the street. The lighthouse will already feel like a dream you had earlier.

The Little Red Lighthouse won’t impress you with size or hype. It will just sit there quietly, doing what it’s done for decades....

We finally made it to "The Little Red Lighthouse". Located in Fort Washington Park under the GWB, Jeffrey's Hook, owned by the NYC Parks, is open for climbing only a few days each year. The Little Red Lighthouse was erected on Sandy Hook, New Jersey in 1880, it became obsolete and was dismantled in 1917. In 1921, the U.S. Coast Guard reconstructed this lighthouse on Jeffrey’s Hook in an attempt to improve navigational aids on the Hudson River. The George Washington Bridge opened in 1931, and the brighter lights of the bridge again made the lighthouse obsolete. In 1948, the Coast Guard decommissioned the lighthouse, and its lamp was extinguished. The Coast Guard planned to auction off the lighthouse, but an outpouring of support for the beacon helped save it. The outcry from the public was prompted by the children’s book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, written by Hildegarde Swift and Lynd Ward in 1942. The classic tale captured the imaginations of children and adults, many of whom wrote letters and sent money to help save the icon from the auction block. On July 23, 1951, the Coast Guard gave the property to NYC Parks, and on May 29, 1979, the Little Red Lighthouse was added to the National Register of...