The lighthouse stands on Jeffrey's Hook, a small point of land that supports the base of the eastern pier of the bridge, which connects Washington Heights in Manhattan to Fort Lee, New Jersey.
History
The first attempt to reduce Hudson River traffic accidents at Jeffrey's Hook was a red pole that was hung out over the river.[5] A 10 candle-power light was added to the pole in 1889 to help alert the increasing river traffic to the spit of land at night. The land around Jeffrey's Hook was acquired by the city in 1896 and later became Fort Washington Park.[5]
The early structure was built as the North Hook Beacon at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, where it stood until 1917, when it became obsolete.[5] It was reconstructed at its current location in 1921 by the United States Lighthouse Board as part of a project to improve Hudson River navigational aids, and originally had a battery-powered lamp and a fog bell. It was operated by a part-time lighthouse keeper.[5]
Construction on the George Washington Bridge, immediately above the lighthouse, started in 1927.[6] When George Washington Bridge was completed in 1931,[7] the lighthouse navigational light was considered obsolete,[8] so the Coast Guard decommissioned it, and put it out in 1948, with the intention of auctioning it off.[5] The proposed dismantling of it resulted in a public outcry, largely from children who were fans of the 1942 children's book, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.[9] This led the Coast Guard to sign its deed to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation on July 23, 1951.[5]
Public access to the lighthouse is by the Hudson River Greenway, reachable north of the George Washington Bridge by a footbridge across the Henry Hudson Parkway at West 182nd Street and Riverside Drive, and south of the bridge by a footbridge at West 158th Street or the newer Denny Farrell Greenway Bridge (a pedestrian and bicycle bridge) at 151st Street.[11] The northern path is very steep immediately north of the bridge, while the southern path is flat.
There is also a very obscure pedestrian underpass at Riverside Drive parallel to 177th Street, just south of the George Washington Bridge. It empties out on the other side of the Henry Hudson Parkway and it's a dirt path down to the lighthouse. This YouTube video[12] gives directions for getting to and using this obscure path. A neighborhood group (Friends of J. Hood Wright Park) in partnership with the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation does monthly cleanups of this route.[13]
There is yet another way to get to the Little Red Lighthouse from Washington Heights. This link[14] shows the path using the Haven Ramp to the Little Red Lighthouse and then returns via this other path that takes you out to Riverside Drive on the west side of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. From there one can walk south to 165th Street.
Tours of the lighthouse are given infrequently. They are arranged by the Parks Department's Urban Park Rangers, especially on the Little Red Lighthouse Festival day in late September and Open House New York day in October. The October Little Red Lighthouse Festivals in 2018 and 2019 were run by the organization Summer on the Hudson[15] in conjunction with the Riverside Park Conservancy[16] and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. The festival was not held in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 Pandemic but it resumed in 2022.[17]
In other media
The lighthouse is an important setting in the final scenes for the 1948 film Force of Evil, and Jane Campion's neo-noir film In the Cut features the lighthouse as motif and as a filming location.[18]
