Cedar Island Lighthouse Restoration Project Begins
The first phase of the Cedar Island Lighthouse restoration project has begun.
On Thursday, the deteriorating lantern was removed so that it can be taken to the Sag Harbor Yacht Club to be restored.
Michael Leahy, the chairman of the Restoration Committee, spoke to Dan’s Papers from the Cedar Island Lighthouse on Thursday morning, as the lantern was being loaded onto a landing craft to begin the journey to Long Wharf.
The lantern refurbishment project will likely be completed by spring 2014. The Cedar Island Lighthouse first served as a guide for whaling ships entering Sag Harbor in 1839, and the current structure was built in 1868.
It was decommissioned in 1934 and is now a park of Suffolk County’s Cedar Point Park. The Lighthouse has largely fallen into disrepair since its closing, a victim of both vandalism and a 1974 fire that gutted the inside.