Greenport will be transported back in time beginning this weekend.
“Snapshot,” an East End Seaport Museum exhibit featuring photos and memorabilia on loan from the public and focusing on the Peconic bays in the 1950s and ’60s will be open to the public beginning Saturday, May 25, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
(more…)The East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation wants you!
More specifically, they want your photos and memorabilia from the 1950s and 1960s to put together an exhibit documenting how Greenport and the surrounding areas appeared during those decades.
(more…)
The arrival of the America to Greenport has been delayed. READ
Of all the tit-for-tat debates the Greenport Village Board has been pulled into in recent years, this latest nonsensical brouhaha over the East End Seaport Museum not paying rent definitely takes the cake.
NEWS-REVIEW FILE PHOTO | East End Arts have announced details about the upcoming East End Challenge. It includes a new exhibit by the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation called “The Bays Around Us: A Tribute to Rachel Carson.”
East End Arts in Riverhead announced last week details about its upcoming East End Challenge, a contest that encourages high school students to help preserve the environment.
The East End Challenge involves having students explore connections between science and art for a new exhibit by the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation called “The Bays Around Us: A Tribute to Rachel Carson.”
Ms. Carson was a marine biologist and conservationist who wrote “Silent Spring,” a book that has been credited with launching the contemporary American environmental movement. This new exhibit will feature the winning entries of the East End Challenge.
Contestants are asked to explore connections between science and art and include a narrative, multimedia or visual images in their presentations. East End Arts officials said a panel of judges will consider the following: quality, message, inventive observation and creative interpretation of the East End’s maritime world. They added: “To paraphrase Einstein, looking at what everyone else is looking at and seeing what no one else is seeing.”
All high school students from the five East End townships — Riverhead, Southold, Shelter Island, Southampton and East Hampton — are eligible.
Students must first submit an application with an outline and description of their proposed project. Cash prize awards are available of up to $1,000 for winning entries. All finalists selected will receive $100 each.
The deadline for entries is March 4. For more information, visit eastendseaport.org/application.htm.
It was a sign of spring’s approach on Sunday when the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation announced its upcoming schedule for lighthouse cruises and disclosed that all will include visits to Long Beach Bar “Bug” Lighthouse.
In addition, special 90-minute excursions to Bug Light will be scheduled throughout the season. Bug Light excursions begin in May with the longer lighthouse cruises starting in June.
Last September during the Maritime Festival, Bug Light was opened to visitors for the first time in about a decade thanks to work done by Costello Marine to provide a safe landing dock. It is one of only four offshore lighthouses throughout the country that was to visitors, according to museum and foundation board president Ted Webb.
He and Bob Allen, whose great-grandfather, William Follett, was a keeper at Bug Light, will share tour duties at the site this coming season. Both will share stories and legends about the lighthouses, including several that are reputed to be haunted.
A schedule of lighthouse cruises is available by calling the museum at 477-2100.
JULIE LANE PHOTO | The Peconic Star II (as seen from the approaching Peconic Star Express) at Bug Light's new dock, which will allow the public to visit once again.
A test run to make sure visitors will be able to safely reach Long Beach Bar “Bug” Lighthouse during Greenport’s Sept. 24-25 Maritime Festival was declared a success Saturday afternoon.
Several members of the East End Seaport Museum and Marine Foundation Board of Directors took a trip aboard the Peconic Star Express to check out a just completed pier built at the lighthouse by Costello Marine of Greenport to make it safe and easy to dock and come ashore. The dock was built at a discount for the foundation.
There has never been a good dock at the lighthouse since its restoration. Tour boats used to tie up to the rocky island and visitors had to clamber over the rocks to get to the lighthouse.
Regular excursions to the lighthouse were suspended about 10 years because of safety and liability concerns.
Despite a low tide, the crew tied up with ease and, using wooden steps set in place by crew members, the party of eight, along with Peconic Star Capt. Rob Spitzenberg and two deckhands, had no trouble reaching the rocky island on which the lighthouse sits.
The resumption of trips to the only one of Southold Town’s seven offshore lighthouses at which boats can tie up is a celebration of perseverance, according to board president Ted Webb.
On July 4, 1963, arsonists destroyed the original Bug Light, so named for its profile as seen from a distance. It took more than 25 years for a rebuilding effort to gain traction but in 1990 the reconstructed lighthouse once again shone brightly.
“It’s a story of what a community can do,” Mr. Webb said. So many people volunteered time and materials to the rebuilding effort, and many more have been dedicated to maintenance of the lighthouse, Mr. Webb said. Now he hopes that resuming visits to the lighthouse will engender the same spirit in the next generation to whom ongoing maintenance will eventually fall.
For several years, the foundation raised money allowing guests to stay in Bug Light’s one bedroom for $1,000 a night. About seven or eight couples a year signed up for the adventure, which included roundtrip transportation and a catered dinner at Claudio’s Restaurant, Mr. Webb said. But the trips were ended several years ago because of safety concerns about getting onto the rocky island, Mr. Webb said.
“We never had a bad accident,” Mr. Webb said, but concerns about access across slippery rocks led to the decision to the suspension, he added.
While there’s no decision yet on resuming the overnight visits, foundation board members hope to raise money, charging about $40 per person, taking visitors to the lighthouse during the Maritime Festival.
Trips aboard the Peconic Star Express are expected to leave the Greenport railroad dock behind the marine museum about every two hours during the two-day event. Tour guide Bob Allen, whose great-grandfather was a keeper at Bug Light, will conduct the tours, which are expected to last 45 minutes to an hour. The trip between the dock and the lighthouse takes about 15 minutes each way.
From the pier, people will enter the lighthouse from the basement and climb a short stairway to a main room that includes a hammock, picnic table, kitchen area and bathroom. A fenced deck surrounds the level, enabling harbor views from all sides.
A winding metal staircase leads to the mezzanine bedroom. Up another level on the winding staircase takes you to a platform on which a ladder is mounted. It leads to the top of the lighthouse, where its lantern is located.
On a clear day, the shore of Old Saybrook, Ct. is clearly visible across Long Island Sound, Mr. Webb said.
Dick Gillooly, a board member along for Saturday’s trip, recalled a family overnight stay at Bug Light about 11 years ago when his children were teenagers. He remembers being awakened at the break of dawn by seagulls dropping shells on the lighthouse roof.
While his children are now grown, that night spent at Bug Light “is still one of their great memories,” he said.
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