Hudson-Athens Lighthouse

Two-hundred years ago, George Washington signed the first public works act of the new nation, and the ninth act of the first Congress, creating the United States Lighthouse Establishment, which would hold jurisdiction over the seven existing lighthouses operated by the individual colonies.

The Hudson-Athens lighthouse was erected in 1874 to protect merchant ships from middle-ground flats in the river which are hazardous because they are barely visible at certain points, It was operated by lighthouse keepers and families until its automation in 1954.

Hudson-Athens Lighthouse

Since it was one of the last lighthouses and family stations built in the upper Hudson, it is believed that its design was derived from the successes and failures at the other lighthouses. Its pier took a different shape so the ice that flowed down the river would hit the extended section and not damage the foundation or the structure as had been the case at the lighthouse in Esopus Meadows, It is the most elegant of the Hudson Lighthouses and its handsome and well crafted architectural detailing as been kept in excellent condition.

In 1982, the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society was founded and in 1984 obtained from the Coast Guard a 20-year lease to the lighthouse, which was falling into disrepair, Chairman Michaele Klein said. Since the society's founding, volunteers have put in more than 6,000 hours of work. The society, which is in charge of preserving the eight-room lighthouse building (the Coast Guard is responsible for the light itself), is currently using grants from the Heritage Task Force and the Hudson River Foundation to fund underwater repairs of the building's foundation, some areas of which the mortar is almost entirely gone, Klein said. Klein would like to eventually make the lighthouse open to the public, "so they could see how it was to live in a building that up to 1938 had no indoor plumbing and where everything was  operated on kerosene, how the weight system worked (to ring) the bell, and what the tasks of the lighthouse family were," he said.

Today electricity runs from the Athens shore to the lighthouse, there is a battery back-up system, the bulbs rotate automatically when one blows out and the fog horn is operated by laser sensors that perceive low visibility.

It wasn't always so easy, however, as Emily Brunner, the daughter of the last lighthouse-keeper, remembers. "There was lots of work for kids to do," she said, work which included painting, caulking the boats, and dropping down on a rope into the water cistern below the kitchen to clean algae off its sides. Emily, her parents Emil and Mary Ellen Brummer (called Eddy and Helen), and her younger brothers Richard and John, moved to the lighthouse in 1932, when she was in first grade, and lived there for five years. Her brother Robert was born on the lighthouse. In winter, Emily pulled her little brothers on a sled across the ice to get to school on shore, and in summer they went by boat. At home, they had kerosene lights, a gas-operated flatiron, a pump to get water up from the roof drainoff into the cistern and a privy which hung out over the water.

Her parents, who spelled each other working the light, had to be at the lighthouse night and day, so the family fished, planned ahead in buying food from the shore, and her mother did canning and baked bread and cakes. Her classmates laughed at her when Brunner, who had been drinking canned milk all her life, had no idea how to draw a cow.

There wasn't much time or place for medical emergencies either. "I remember my father going down to the cellar with a bottle of whiskey and a pair of pliers," said Brunner, who was petrified of dentists for years after. Her little brothers used to tease her by pulling up the board to the lighthouse so she couldn't cross over, or by taking the caulk out of the boat when they didn't want to go somewhere, but for the most part they all had to find a way to live together peacefully.

Information provided by the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Presevation.