It's safe to say their new "house" will be a change of scenery. A South Dakota couple has purchased the mothballed Hog Island Shoal Lighthouse, midway between Hog Island and the Portsmouth shore, for $165,000. The federal General Services Administration (GSA), which had been marketing the decommissioned light for six months, confirmed the sale last month to Jon and Juli Chytka of South Dakota.
Though the Chytkas could not be reached for comment — the GSA declined to release information about them, and their number is unlisted — the Chytkas will likely be able to move in soon. All that is needed to complete the transaction is a formal lease agreement with the State of Rhode Island, which owns the underwater land on which the 105-year-old lighthouse sits.
The Chytkas "are leasing the land beneath the lighthouse from the state," said Edward Sanderson, the head of the state's Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission. Mr. Sanderson's agency, along with the state Coastal Resources Management Council, must sign off on any lease arrangement. Once the lease is finalized, said Mr. Sanderson, the Chytkas will have to abide by federal historic preservation laws as they refurbish the light. It is the first lighthouse ever offered for public sale in New England.
The Chytkas purchased it only after a long, and ultimately fruitless, search to find an organization capable of taking permanent care of the light. GSA officials offered it to non-profits for several years, but there were no takers.
The light
The Hog Island Shoal Lighthouse has been warning vessels away from the treacherous rocky shoals there since it was lit in October, 1901.
Located west of the Mt. Hope Bridge, just south of Hog Island, the 60-foot-tall conical white brick tower sits atop a black cast iron and granite "spark plug" caisson — a type common in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. It was one of 13 that used pneumatic pressure tubes instead of timber cofferdams for the foundation's difficult in-water construction.
The lighthouse contains five floors with the galley originally on the first level, living quarters on the second and third floors, a storage room and workshop on the fourth, and the lantern room on the top level.
According to the Coast Guard, the station was first equipped with a French-built 5th order Fresnel lens, but was upgraded to a 4th order classical lens two years later. The lighthouse now holds an automated lens.
Before there was a lighthouse there, several lightships guarded the narrow channel. The Old Colony steamship Company anchored a small light boat in the area in 1866, and 20 years later, the Eel Grass Shoals lightship was moved from Fishers Island Sound to Hog Island Shoal and re-named the Hog Island lightship. The decision was eventually made to replace the lightship with a lighthouse, and Congress appropriated $35,000 for the job in 1896. According to the Coastlore Productions website, the lightship keeper was dismissed for drunkenness just months before the lighthouse was finished. The old lightship was sold at auction for $360.
By Ted Hayes
thayes@easatbaynewspapers.com