Little Red Lighthouse

The Little Red Lighthouse, officially Jeffrey's Hook Light, is a small lighthouse located in Fort Washington Park along the Hudson River in Manhattan, New York City, under the George Washington Bridge.^[2][3][4] It was made notable by the 1942 children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and The Great Gray Bridge, written by Hildegarde Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward.

Jeffrey's Hook Light
Little Red Lighthouse

Location	Fort Washington Park, Manhattan, United States
Coordinates	40°51′01″N 73°56′49″W
Tower
Constructed	1921
Construction	concrete (foundation), cast iron (tower)
Height	40 ft (12 m)
Shape	conical
Markings	red (tower), white (lantern)
Heritage	New York City Landmark, National Register of Historic Places listed place
Light
First lit	2002
Deactivated	1947–2002
Lens	12 inches (300 mm)
Characteristic	Fl R 3s
Jeffrey's Hook Lighthouse
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
New York City Landmark
Built	1920
MPS	Hudson River Lighthouses TR
NRHP reference No.	79003130[1]
Significant dates
Added to NRHP	May 29, 1979
Designated NYCL	May 14, 1991

The lighthouse stands on Jeffrey's Hook, a small point of land that supports the base of the eastern pier of the bridge, which connects Washington Heights in Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey.

History

The first attempt to reduce Hudson River traffic accidents at Jeffrey's Hook was a red pole that was hung out over the river.^[5] A 10 candle-power light was added to the pole in 1889 to help alert the increasing river traffic to the spit of land at night. The land around Jeffrey's Hook was acquired by the city in 1896 and later became Fort Washington Park.^[5]

The early structure was built as the North Hook Beacon at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where it stood until 1917, when it became obsolete.^[5] It was reconstructed at its current location in 1921 by the United States Lighthouse Board as part of a project to improve Hudson River navigational aids, and originally had a battery-powered lamp and a fog bell. It was operated by a part-time lighthouse keeper.^[5]

Construction on the George Washington Bridge, immediately above the lighthouse, started in 1927.^[6] When George Washington Bridge was completed in 1931,^[7] the lighthouse navigational light was considered obsolete,^[8] so the Coast Guard decommissioned it, and put it out in 1948, with the intention of auctioning it off.^[5] The proposed dismantling of it resulted in a public outcry, largely from children who were fans of the 1942 children's book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.^[9] This led the Coast Guard to sign its deed to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation on July 23, 1951.^[5]

The lighthouse was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as "Jeffrey's Hook Lighthouse" in 1979,^[10] and was designated a New York City Landmark in 1991.^[5] In 2002, it was relit by the city.^[4]

Access

Public access to the lighthouse is by the Hudson River Greenway, reachable to the north by a footbridge across the Henry Hudson Parkway at West 182nd Street and Riverside Drive, and to the south by footbridges at West 158th Street or 151st Street.^[11]

Tours of the lighthouse are given infrequently. They are arranged by the Parks Department's Urban Park Rangers, especially on the Little Red Lighthouse Festival day in late September and Open House New York day in October. The October Little Red Lighthouse Festivals in 2018 and 2019 were run by the organization Summer on the Hudson^[12] in conjunction with the Riverside Park Conservancy^[13] and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The festival was not held in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but it resumed in 2022.^[14]

In other media

The lighthouse is an important setting in the final scenes for the 1948 film Force of Evil, and Jane Campion's neo-noir film In the Cut features the lighthouse as motif and as a filming location.^[15]

See also

• List of New York City Landmarks
• National Register of Historic Places listings in New York County, New York