Gardiner Family Grant Boosts Lighthouse Restoration Effort

With an outpouring of support from financial backers, the Montauk Historical Society, which owns the Montauk Lighthouse, says it is now hoping to be able to complete a top-to-bottom rehabilitation of the lighthouse’s “tower” by next year and will also now renovate the 160-year-old lighthouse keeper’s quarters.

The historical society announced this week that it has received a grant of $390,700 from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, a charitable group founded from the estate of the late Gardiner’s Island heir Robert D. L. Gardiner and dedicated to the preservation of Long Island’s history and historic places.

The historical society has now raised some $1.6 million for the restoration work, according to the society’s director, Mia Certic, and has set its sights on broader effort to protect the historic structures on Turtle Hill.

In 2019, the society began what Ms. Certic said was a long-overdue rehabilitation of the lighthouse’s exterior in an effort to protect the structure from a slow deterioration that was caused by, among other things, poorly conceived past efforts to shore up the structure.

“This is the most extensive work that has been done on the lighthouse since 1860, when they added 30 feet to its height,” Ms. Certic said. “We are very fortunate and grateful for the Gardiner Foundation stepping up with this huge, wonderful grant.”

The 1860 project added 30 feet of brick to the original 80-foot sandstone tower and outfitted it with a first order Fresnel lens, the powerful beam dubbed “the invention that saved a million ships.” It is also when the current lighthouse keeper’s quarters were constructed.

For decades, the corroding metal of the lantern cupola has allowed water to seep into the interior of the lighthouse, deteriorating the relatively soft sandstone exterior. The current restoration project is chipping away layers of cement that were used in an early rehabilitation project and replacing it with lime putty mortar, a softer material that was used in the original construction and allows moisture to escape the interior. Some of the structural stones that have deteriorated too much are being replaced entirely.

Large donations from the Gardiner Foundation, $250,000 from Northwell Health and a Montauk family that gave $150,000, have allowed the group to also plan a full renovation of the lighthouse keeper’s quarters.

Ms. Certic said the renovation work on the tower should be completed this year and that the exterior will be re-painted with moisture permeable mineral paint in 2022.

The rehabilitation work atop Turtle Hill is happening independently of the 2-year, $31 million reconstruction of the stone revetment that protects the bluff beneath the lighthouse by the Army Corps of Engineers, which began in the spring.