We all know books can change the world, sometimes in big
ways but more often in small ways. One of my favorite childhood books, and one
that likely planted the seeds of my fascination with lighthouses, changed the
world for one small lighthouse…and for thousands of kids.
The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, written
by Hildegarde H. Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward, was in my school library
when I was in fourth grade. It was 1962, and a new wing had opened that year in
the elementary school I attended. It included a spacious library and a
fresh-out-of-college, pretty librarian named Miss Hardy. I was smitten with
both the new library and all its new books. I asked Miss Hardy if I could be a
library helper.
She put me to work re-shelving returned books. They were arranged
by call number on a metal cart, which made pushing the cart through the stacks
much easier. It was a wonderful job except that I often got distracted looking
at the books I was supposed to re-shelve. Miss Hardy was patient and
understanding; she was probably the same way as a child.
One day she found me sitting on the floor next to the book cart
looking at The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge. She sat down on
the footstool near me and asked if I had ever been to New York City. I hadn’t.
NYC seemed a million miles away from the rural area of Western Maryland where I
lived.
“Well, that bridge in the book is a real bridge, and it’s amazing.
I took a trip to NYC a few years ago to see it. It’s HUGE, with two decks for
cars!! Do you know what river that is?”
I didn’t.
“It’s the Hudson River, named after a famous explorer. And
big boats go up and down the river. That’s why it needs lighthouses.”
Miss Hardy then proceeded to fetch me some books about NYC
and the Hudson River, and she let me check out The Little Red Lighthouse and
the Great Gray Bridge. I took it home and read it to my mother that evening
after supper as she sewed missing buttons on my brothers’ shirts. I even impersonated
the voice of the big bridge as it spoke to its little brother, the lighthouse,
telling the small tower that even though it was much littler than the bridge,
it still had work to do signaling to ships. Mom smiled at the end and asked me
how I thought the Little Red lighthouse felt.
“It was sad at first, because it thought the big bridge had
replaced it. But in the end it felt important, even though it’s very little!” I
said. “It’s glad it still has a job to do.”
(Can you see the little lighthouse on the right below the bridge tower?)
Mom nodded and reminded me of the things I could do because
I was small—crawl under the bed to fetch an errant sock, pick up a dropped
sewing needle with my small fingers, reach under the nest boxes in the chicken
house when a hen laid an egg there, and squeeze between my big brothers in the
back seat of Mom’s old Oldsmobile.
The message of Hildegarde H. Swift’s story had gotten
through, not only for me, but for all kids who read her story. There are big
things and little things, and though we are often impressed by big things, they
are no more important than little things. Every kid wants to be big, and
sometimes she feels unimportant because she’s small. That was me at time. I was
the youngest child in a large family, and the smallest. Time and again I heard
admonishments like: “You’re too little to do that” or “When you get bigger you
can try that.” Hoyt made me feel important, like the Little Red Lighthouse.
There’s a story behind her book. It’s a tale of a tale—one that
started a groundswell of protest about the possible loss of one small, beloved
lighthouse. After the George Washington Bridge was completed in 1931, its
bridge lights superseded the small beacon of Jeffries Hook Lighthouse, sitting
on the east side of the river almost under the bridge. The tiny lighthouse and
its beacon seemed inconsequential next to a giant bridge shimmering with lights.
Aiming to reduce costs, the Coast Guard announced in 1948 that it would
discontinue and sell the little lighthouse.
Hoyt and Ward had published The Little Red Lighthouse and
the Great Gray Bridge in 1942, and it had been read by thousands of kids. Though
Swift never gave a name to the bridge or the lighthouse in her book, everyone
knew she had written about the George Washington Bridge and the Jeffries Hook
Lighthouse. When newspapers reported that the Little Red Lighthouse was going
away, a cry went up from children and their parents. How could the Coast Guard
even consider destroying such a beloved icon of children’s literature?
A few years later, the Coast Guard relented, and on July 23,
1951, the lighthouse was given to the New York City Dept. of Parks &
Recreation.
For years, it languished; then, the burgeoning lighthouse
preservation movement took hold in the 1970s. Jeffries Hook Lighthouse was
added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and made a New York
City Landmark in 1991. Funds were raised—some by children who donated pennies,
nickels, and dimes to the effort—and the lighthouse underwent a $209,000
refurbishment in 1986 and was relighted in 2002.
Today, it is well-maintained by the City of New York and opened
for tours on occasion. The Little Red Lighthouse Festival is held every September
with music, food, games, tours of the diminutive 30-foot sentinel, and
celebrities reading aloud The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.
While everyone knows the lighthouse by its nickname of
Little Red, its history as Jeffries Hook lighthouse is not well-known. The
tower started its career in 1880 at Sandy Hook, New Jersey as the Sandy Hook North
Beacon, showing a red light and sounding a resonant gong on its 1,000-pound fogbell
when the area turned murky. This beacon, along with the larger Sandy Hook
Lighthouse, guided shipping in and out of New York Harbor and past a dangerous
strand of unpredictable sand extending north from Highlands, New Jersey.
In 1889, the Lighthouse Service erected a simple
pole beacon on the Hudson River at Jeffries Hook, a finger of soil and rocks jutting
out into the river and posing a significant danger to shipping, especially the
steamers of the day that hugged the east shore of the river on their way north.
As early as 1895, the U.S. Lighthouse Board began requesting funds from
Congress to upgrade the pole beacon to a better, more useful navigational light,
but the wheels of government turned slowly at this time, and funding took
twenty-five years to be approved.
Meanwhile, the Sandy Hook North Beacon had lost its usefulness,
due to changes in the shoreline and the shipping routes in and out of New York
Harbor. It was extinguished in 1917. The Lighthouse Service decided this tower
could be moved to Jeffries Hook on the Hudson River for less money than a new
tower would cost. In 1921, the Sandy Hook North Beacon was dismantled and moved
by barge to Jeffries Hook. It was made somewhat self-sufficient, with a battery-operated
red beacon and a fogbell with a striking mechanism. A keeper, who lived
off-site, was hired to check on it periodically to be sure it was working
properly.
Seven years after its relocation, workmen arrived and began
building the George Washington Bridge. From 1931 when the bridge was opened to
traffic until the 1970s when the public demanded it be saved, the lighthouse
was in limbo. Hildegarde H. Swift surely noticed this and felt sad for the little sentinel. She gave it immortality in a simple, heartwarming story.
Today, that story is revered by schoolchildren around the nation.
They know, their voices may be little, but they can be heard...and even something as small as a Little Red Lighthouse under a gigantic bridge is important.
Hildegarde Hoyt Swift died in 1977. She didn’t live long
enough to see The Little Red Lighthouse restored. Illustrator Lynd Ward saw the
first preservation efforts before he died in 1985.
A footnote to this blog—
I have never visited The Little Red Lighthouse! Yet, it launched my interest in lighthouses. Now, that's the power of one book!
I think it’s
time I do go see it. After all, it subtly inspired my successful career as a lighthouse historian
and author in the lighthouse genre. I think I’ll go see it next time I visit my
granddaughters in Connecticut and take them with me. It’s time for a new
generation to get inspired by a cherished, timeless story.
(Photos of Little Red are from Wikimedia Commons and Architectural Digest.)
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