4 Photos
A view of "the pillbox"in 1976, a year before the U.S. Coast Guard used fire hoses to wash away the bluff beneath it and let it fall to the beach below because of the danger of it falling unexpectedly. The photo is on display in the Lighthouse museum's Erosion Room.
Henry Osmers, the Montauk Lighthouse historian, with the main hunk of the pillbox, which was lifted off the beach at the start of the current revetment extension, and will be reassembled and placed on the lighthouse property, where it had originally served as a WWII-era watch station.
A model of the lighthouse property in the post-WWII days shows the pillbox when it was buried in the bluff along the lighthouse property's southern edge. Built in 1943, by 1976, erosion had exposed the pillbox and its foundation.
A view of the pillbox in 1969 with visitor sitting atop its roof looking out at the Atlantic.
Michael Wright on Sep 28, 2022