“Beaming Reflections: A Tribute to 150 Years of Light”, held at Hudson Hall, brought out residents from the Twin Counties to celebrate the history of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse and learn more about the efforts to save it. The lighthouse brings people together, Kristin Gamble, president of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society said during the event. “Everybody pulls together in their love of the lighthouse, and in this part of the valley, it’s really a sense of our identity,” she said.
“As we look at that lighthouse sitting there in the middle of the river, it’s ours, we feel personal about it.” Kristin Gamble, president of the Hudson-Athens Lighthouse Preservation Society, speaking during the event on Friday. The lighthouse has acted as a protector for over a century, Van Calhoun, chairman of the preservation society’s Restoration Committee, said during the event on Friday.
“It was a beacon of light, in a physical sense and metaphorical sense because it shone in our communities across the river and up and down, and it brought us together,” he said. “But, after protecting us from danger for all that time, the lighthouse was now in danger itself.” The Hudson-Athens Lighthouse, built in 1874, was added to the National Trust for Historic Preservations list of most endangered historic places in the country in May.
Over the course of its construction, from 1872 through 1874, engineers drove 200 wooden pilings 50 feet into the bed of the Hudso.