A bunch of 4 males broke right into a historic New York lighthouse alongside the Hudson River, set a hearth and vandalized the inside, destroying beneficial antiques, furnishings and different objects.
The Tarrytown Lighthouse in Sleepy Hole, in-built 1883 and now on the Nationwide Register of Historic Locations, had simply undergone a two-year, $3.4 million renovation and reopened to the general public final fall, Westchester County officers mentioned.
A county parks employee noticed smoke coming from the conical, five-story lighthouse on Saturday morning, then found the injury, county police mentioned. Police and firefighters responded and put out a small fireplace with extinguishers.
The flooring on the primary degree was closely broken. Antiques, furnishings and different traditionally vital objects had been destroyed. Thirty-five books relationship to the 1800s and early 1900s had been strewn on the ground and broken. A number of home windows had been damaged.
County officers say there’s at the very least $100,000 in injury, and so they count on that quantity to extend when an evaluation is full.
“The Tarrytown Lighthouse is one of our County’s most iconic and cherished landmarks,” County Govt Ken Jenkins mentioned in a press release. “This was a truly despicable act, and we will do everything we can to identify those responsible and bring them to justice.”
FILE – The Sleepy Hole Lighthouse at Kingsland Level Park sits on the Hudson River at sundown, July 26, 2017, in Sleepy Hole, N.Y. (AP Photograph/Julie Jacobson, File)
County police have posted surveillance pictures on their Fb web page displaying 4 younger males close to the lighthouse and are asking for the general public’s assist in figuring out them. No arrests have been made.
As a part of the renovation, inside and exterior sections had been restored and repainted. Home windows had been changed and the construction stabilized. Repairs had been made to the forged iron exterior and masonry. Wooden flooring had been repaired and restored.
The fireplace burned almost right through the picket first ground, mentioned Peter Tartaglia, first deputy commissioner of the Westchester County Division of Parks, Recreation and Conservation.
“It’s disturbing what happened,” he mentioned in a cellphone interview Wednesday. “But we’ll get it fixed. We’ll get it back. It was historically reconstructed and it’s a wonderful piece of history. It’s iconic in Westchester County to see that on the Hudson River.”
The 60-foot-tall lighthouse, owned by the county, opened in 1883 to information ships previous harmful shoals alongside that stretch of the river, in accordance with the parks division. Its lantern may solid a beam of sunshine seen for 10 miles, and it had a bell that might warn mariners throughout foggy circumstances, the division mentioned.
Westchester Co.
Westchester Co.
Photographs of injury made to historic Tarrytown Lighthouse. (Courtesy of Westchester County Police Division)
Throughout its 74 years of operation, 14 lighthouse keepers lived within the construction, some with their households. It was rendered out of date when the previous Tappan Zee Bridge was accomplished in 1955 and brought out of service in 1961, officers mentioned.
It is positioned about 20 miles north of Manhattan in a park within the village of Sleepy Hole, made well-known in Washington Irving’s 1820 story in regards to the Headless Horseman. It is one in every of seven Hudson River lighthouses that stay.
The arson and vandalism comes slightly greater than a month after a barge pushed by a tugboat struck the historic Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, about 80 miles upriver from Tarrytown. The April 29 crash severely broken the dock of the 151-year-old lighthouse, which advocates have been attempting to save lots of from crumbling into the river.
