Montauk lighthouse landmark opinion due

A National Park Service committee is scheduled to recommend this week whether to add the Montauk Point Lighthouse to the exclusive list of National Historic Landmarks.

The lighthouse, authorized by President George Washington and built in 1796, is already one of the more than 86,000 sites on the National Register of Historic Places maintained by the park service. But becoming one of the fewer than 2,500 National Historic Landmarks would increase its visitation and could help the museum obtain grants for restoration, programming and exhibits.

The Montauk Historical Society, which owns the lighthouse, has spent six years filing "reams of paper" seeking the designation, said Eleanor Ehrhardt, a member of the society's Lighthouse Committee who has led the effort. Success would bring prestige and additional protection for the structure, she said.

The National Park Service Advisory Board's Landmarks Committee will make a recommendation to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, who will make the final decision.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) Wednesday wrote to the committee urging a recommendation for inclusion of New York's oldest lighthouse and one of the first seacoast lighthouses authorized by Congress. "The Montauk Point Lighthouse has a rich history and continues to serve as a vital navigation feature to this day," she wrote, adding it has been on the National Register since 1969.

According to the park service, National Historic Landmarks must "possess exceptional value or quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States."

Ehrhardt said, "We couldn't just become a landmark because George Washington authorized the lighthouse. We had to prove that it was significant to the development of the United States in some way." The historical society made a case that from 1797 to 1870 the lighthouse was a critical waypoint for ships coming from Europe and it helped make New York Harbor the nation's premier port.

On another front, the society has received bad news from the Coast Guard, which maintains the lighting apparatus in the tower.

The museum had sought permission to replace the rotating airport-style light with a replica of the huge clamshell-style Fresnel glass prism lens that was mounted in the tower from 1857 until 1987 and is now displayed in the museum. The society said it would be brighter for fishermen and other boaters and make the tower more historically accurate.

In a Nov. 3 letter, Rear Adm. D.A. Neptun, commander of the 1st Coast Guard District in Boston, wrote, "Montauk Point Light continues to be a major seacoast aid of particular importance to offshore and coastal mariners . . . We are therefore prohibited . . . from installing any nonstandard, noncertified optic . . . "

Dick White, chairman of the society's lighthouse committee, said, "We're very disappointed. We were going to regroup and figure out how to proceed."

BEST OF THE BEST

The 11 National Historic Landmarks on Long Island

'CHRISTEEN'

1883 oyster dredging sloop owned by the WaterFront Center

Located: Oyster Bay

FORT MASSAPEAG ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Located: Massapequa

JOHN PHILIP SOUSA HOUSE

Located: Port

Washington

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN (OLD WHALERS) CHURCH

Located: Sag Harbor

FORT CORCHAUG ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE

Located: Southold

THOMAS MORAN HOUSE

Located: East Hampton

WILLIAM SYDNEY MOUNT HOUSE

Located: Stony Brook

OLD HOUSE

Located: Cutchogue

JACKSON POLLOCK HOUSE AND STUDI

Located: East Hampton

'PRISCILLA'

123-year-old South Shore oyster dredging sloop and oyster sloop "Modesty" built in 1923, both owned by Long Island Maritime Museum Located: West Sayville