"Another little speck out in the Harbor:" A Coast Guardsman's recollections of life at Robbins Reef

I was very excited when I received a surprise email from Norman Pulliam, a former Coast Guardsman who volunteered for duty at Robbins Reef Lighthouse in 1964, and was one of the last keepers of the light before it was automated.  He had pictures of the interior and exterior from his time there and wondered if I would be interested.  Of course I was!  We have pieced together a history of Kate Walker’s time as keeper at Robbins Reef and a timeline of events since the Coast Guard took over in 1939.  Pulliam’s photographs and stories describe the last chapter in the narrative of the years when Robbins Reef had keepers.

Norman Pulliam enlisted in the Coast Guard at age 18 and was stationed at Coast Guard Group New York.  Hailing from California, he had never been to New York City before … “I got off [the subway] at Battery Park ... all of New York harbor right in front of me.  I could see Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, which I had only seen on television during the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve firework celebrations.  There was another little speck sitting way out in the harbor …. I would get to know that little speck very well.”  Just a few months into his service—and after weeks on mess hall duty—he received word that his superiors were looking for a volunteer seaman for lighthouse duty, and he signed up quickly.

The promenade as it appeared when Pulliam arrived in the summer of 1964.

On July 27, 1964, Pulliam arrived at Robbins Reef and was greeted by a member of the crew, who sailed out on a skiff to meet his boat.  The water around the lighthouse is shallow at low tide, and “we did not have any kind of boat dock or platform; … the ladder was the only access up to the lighthouse.  We relied heavily on our 16-foot skiff for our basic survival needs.  It hauled our groceries, propane bottles, and crewmembers going to or coming back from liberty.”

The bathroom, which was located on the promenade, had a washing machine.

The Coast Guard made many changes to the lighthouse in the 1940s and 50s.  When they kept the light, the promenade was partially enclosed with a porch which had a toilet, shower, sinks, and a washing machine.  The Guard added electricity, and the crew enjoyed modern conveniences like a television and, for the first time, running water, courtesy of a potable water tank and a hot water heater.  “A couple of our crewmembers thought we should be receiving ‘isolated duty’ pay for working on Robbins Reef Lighthouse.  For me it was peaceful and laidback…. we were never awakened by the sound of reveille, but you could always count on the sound of a fresh pot of coffee percolating on the stove in the kitchen.  You might even wake up to the smell of bacon cooking on the stove and drifting up the stairwell.”

The first floor kitchen was the only common living area and had a television.

That’s not to say the work wasn’t difficult and tiring.  There were four crewmembers—three were aboard the light at all times, and one was always awake.  They would work for 6 days and then have 3 days of liberty.  The day was divided up into three watches, each 8 hours long.  From 8 AM to 4 PM, “we did general housekeeping work such as cleaning the bathroom, stove, shower, defrosting the refrigerator… I was a Seaman and the only one responsible for cleaning and polishing the brass on the 4th order Fresnel lens atop the light.  I could spend an entire day polishing the brass and cleaning the lens and the windows inside and out.”  From 4 PM to 12 AM the crew had “free time to do basically anything we wanted to do.  We could watch TV, read, write a letter, put a fishing line in the water, or maybe go up and take a nap before dinner.”  The last watch was from 12 AM until 8 AM.  “This was a long and monotonous watch, but all of us took turns.  This watch cleaned the kitchen area and mopped, waxed, and buffed the kitchen floor.”

Pulliam vividly remembers the day he and his fellow crewmembers were informed that plans to automate the lighthouse were underway.  “One day early in October 1964 … we were instructed to pick up personnel the following morning…. [the gentleman who arrived] was not a ‘Coastie.’  We offered him a cup of coffee and he said he was preparing to make the lighthouse automated and, when completed, no one would need to live on the lighthouse any longer.  This came as a complete shock to us…. It would mark the end of a long era.  It looks like I would be one of the last few ‘Coasties’ to serve on Robbins Reef Lighthouse.”  The light was fully automated in 1966 using electricity for power.  Today it is powered by solar energy.

In March of 1965, Pulliam received his orders; his lighthouse duty was complete.  Though he went on to serve several more years with the Coast Guard, he remembers his time at Robbins Reef as “Paradise Island.”  All these years later, we are so happy that he found us and shared his engaging story.

- Megan Beck

Stobart at Noble

Artist John Stobart in his youth. PHOTO: Kensington-Stobart Gallery

In October, 1976 while working for the National Maritime Historical Society, Bob Murphy, good friend of the museum, invited Noble to be in an exhibition at the National Boat Show.  Noble demurred.  “The work of these sailboat and historical buffs probably has its place, but I really hate like the devil to be confused with them,” he wrote.  “I draw only contemporary things—things I have seen and which I may have the background to interpret.  Remember I am the boy in the rowboat with two oars and one pencil.” 

Shortly thereafter, disappointed that he would not participate in the Boat Show, Stobart, who was part of it, wrote to Noble, “I’ve always thought a great deal of your work and would have been glad to have the honour of meeting you.  I gather you have some pretty severe criticism of the full-sail, clipper-ship types—in which case I guess I admire you for taking a stand.”  He invited him to put work in the gallery in Georgetown he was opening with his friend Malcolm Henderson—“an extremely attractive place on the old canal (Chesapeake & Ohio).”

Again Noble demurred.  “May I confess to you in all humility that exhibiting in a maritime gallery is a thing I have a slight fear of.  Believe it or not—I have only tried to do contemporary scenes that meant a great deal to me as best I could on a lithographic stone.  (Though in my case ‘contemporary’ goes back a bit, and I did know upward of 175 sailing vessels.)  But in the last few years yachtsmen, historians, semi-historians, and sail buffs have begun to plague me with questions…that sort of put a layer of dry dust over my endeavors.  Most of my time has been devoted to attempting a decent composition, not to record history....  The fancy Sealand calendar listed me as dead, and I have been taken for something out of the Civil War period.”

John Stobart, San Pedro: The Bark Vidette Towing into Port at Sunrise in 1890, oil on canvas, 1983; courtesy of Kensington Galleries.

Back came a scrawled letter from Stobart in February.  He enclosed a catalog of Henderson’s etchings and a catalog of his own limited edition prints—“I tremendously admire the originality and power of your things which will prove, I know, to be a finer document than any others being done today.”  He asked Noble if he “could spare a copy or two of your lithographs.  We’d be honored to have them.”

On March 3 Noble responded, confessing, “It came as a deserved shock to me last week when for the first time I saw the truly magnificent quality of your work in South Street.”  He admired Henderson’s catalog—“Opening it up was like coming home to old friends,” and readily agreed to send “anything I have—for with such company…I would hang in a junk shop or a dark dripping cellar.”

The friendship that began then eventually engendered Stobart at Noble.  The renowned maritime painter has been a generous Trustee of the museum for 17 years.  In 2003 he staged a retrospective of his work here, and today his paintings and small pencil drawings grace our library.  Noble would have been enraptured.

-Erin Urban

The drawing, the painting, and the print

John Noble’s money came from his art.  He did art because it compelled him from within, and he sold it “to make a living.”

“Sue and I burnt our bridges,” he said, looking back at the time after sailing on the Annie C. Ross and doing salvage with William Van Frank, he decided to pursue a career solely as an artist.  “Burning your bridges means if you can’t play Carnegie Hall, you’re going to play the local saloon.  That’s what I mean.  Stay.  Stick it.  We burnt our bridges.  We stuck it.”  The process of developing a work of art, from drawing to painting to print, came naturally to Noble, and, for he and Susan, it coincided with their need to support themselves.  

The first step was inspiration.  Struck by a scene, like the Getty refinery glittering at night he’d do a drawing—and if it worked, then a finished piece in pencil, charcoal, or both.  If a suitable composition emerged, with it came the idea of following up with a lithograph. 

Having grown up in “a rich Bohemia,” Noble was keenly aware that he would need a wealthy patron to survive as an artist, as his father had.  Fine art was available only to a small group of wealthy connoisseurs in those days, and the fine artist was isolated from larger audiences.  But as lithography emerged as a legitimate fine art form in this country after World War II, he realized his prints could bring his ideas to the people whose work was their subject. 

“A print has power just like something you write on a piece of paper has power,” he said.  “I can send a piece of paper to Melbourne, Australia for just a few cents.  I can make social comments.”  He reveled in expressing his ideas through what he called “the most democratic and yet the most aristocratic” of mediums.  Though it cost money to produce, a print would sell readily and enlarge his influence as it expanded his audience. 

He had personal, aesthetic reasons for making lithographs.  He was an accomplished draftsman, sensitive to the nuances of black and white.  He accumulated over 600 plein air drawings over the years and though many are exquisite, unique, and historically valuable, he was often reluctant to sell them.  They were his point of reference, and they inspired him.  Unlike these spontaneous works, he “fussed over” the carefully constructed, formal drawings he did in preparation for drawing on a stone. 

As a young man, before he took up lithography, Noble painted.  His early works done out of doors show the influence of the command of color that made his father’s work so distinctive.  Late in life he returned to painting more regularly.  His large, unfinished Watchman of the Dead painting was on the easel in his studio at 270 Richmond Terrace when he died.

As his reputation grew, Noble attracted patrons who commissioned them, and sometimes even suggested them to him.  If someone liked a particular print, they might ask if he would “make it into a painting.”  In the case of Dying in the English Kills, from the Mast and Man series, when his pal and partner in crime, Jim O’Malley, an Irish customs officer with a flair for poetry and drama, asked him to do a painting of the print, Noble agreed.  O’Malley stopped by as the work was in progress and suggested he “stop right there.”  O’Malley contended that the rigging would obscure the background and told Noble to forego it.  The figure in the lithograph is repairing the rat lines at the top of the rigging of a schooner, but in the painting he is floating in space.  Thus Dying in the English Kills (without rigging) came into being.  It still provokes inane comments, like “is he dying because he is falling off the mast?”  Such questions must have put grins on the faces of the two conspirators.

-Erin Urban

The First Keeper of the Lights

People often wonder why we took on Robbins Reef Lighthouse, the small sparkplug station at the entrance of the Kill van Kull one mile off the North Shore of Staten Island.  One of the many reasons is because of its critical role in navigation through New York Harbor and its importance in American maritime history.  But Robbins Reef also has a connection to Sailors’ Snug Harbor: Alexander Hamilton.

The 1792 Cape Henry Lighthouse at Fort Story in Virginia Beach, VA. PHOTO: Wikimedia Commons

In 1789, the first session of the United States Congress in 1789 passed the Act for the Establishment and Support of Lighthouses, Beacons, Buoys, and Public Piers, more simply referred to as the Lighthouse Act, which was only the ninth legislative act and the first public works bill passed by the new government.  The Act created the U.S. Lighthouse Establishment and placed it under the jurisdiction of the Department of the Treasury.  After the Act’s passage, Congress began to assume control of the twelve active lighthouses situated throughout the former colonies, but, wary of the central government, the new states did not complete this transfer until 1798, nine years after the bill’s passage.  The government also explicitly commissioned the construction of a station at Cape Henry, Virginia, near the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, in the Lighthouse Act.  Prior to the ratification of the Constitution, the Virginia colony had declared its intention to build a lighthouse at Cape Henry because it was a vulnerable and strategic point on the eastern seaboard where 50 vessels had been lost.  The lighthouse was completed in 1792.

As the first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton, with characteristic attention and concern, oversaw the absorption of existing lighthouses by the federal government, the design and construction of Cape Henry Light and all the lighthouse projects that followed during his tenure with the department.

Hamilton was a strong advocate for the passage of navigation-related federal legislation and was a driving force behind the Lighthouse Act.  He believed that lighthouses should be under the control of the central government, rather than under the jurisdiction of individual states or municipalities, to ensure their financial stability nationally.  The growth and development of the economy and the nation’s financial institutions were core tenants of his work as Treasury Secretary, and he firmly believed that the strategic placement of lighthouses would create additional port cities and superior trading conditions that would allow the federal economy, still in its infancy, to flourish.  The construction of guiding lights was also a major part of Hamilton’s plan to ensure safe conditions in all major American ports.

Hamilton had a history of interest in the sea and the protection and safety of sailors.  In 1769, a New York-based committee of mariners and attorneys gathered to create an organization to care for widows and orphans of mariners and to promote general maritime knowledge.  The following year, King George III granted the charter, formally establishing the Marine Society of the City of New York.  During the Revolutionary War, loyalists and patriots alike held membership in the Society, including Hamilton and the patriot group, the Sons of Liberty.  Among its first members were Captain Thomas Randall and his son, Robert Richard.  Hamilton had close ties to the Randall family as friend and attorney, and, in 1801, as he was dying, Robert Richard summoned Hamilton and asked him to write his will which ultimately established a free, democratic haven for “aged, decrepit, and worn out seaman” named Sailors’ Snug Harbor.  Over the 140 years of its existence on Staten Island, the Harbor provided free care to over 10,000 people.

The museum is organizing an exhibition about Hamilton’s ties to the marine industry and to Cape Henry and changes in the Treasures of Sailors’ Snug Harbor exhibition that include the conservation of three more paintings in the Sailors’ Snug Harbor Trust’s collection.  The Luce Library has finished cataloging some of the scrapbooks of portraits of mariners who came to Sailors’ Snug Harbor—each man who was admitted was photographed—and we will exhibit them as well.

-Megan Beck

Touching children 4,800 miles away

The museum had the privilege of working with Memory Project, a global nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create portraits of children facing substantial challenges around the world.  Most of the children live in orphanages and have been victims of war, loss of parents, and poverty.  Memory Project receives photos of the children from the facilities that care for them, and they make large color prints of them to send to participating art teachers.  After studying the photos, the teachers and their students make portraits of the children, which Memory Project hand delivers to the subjects when their portraits are finished.

Back in March, Staten Island Academy art teachers Kristi Pfister and Catherine Dunning told me they were creating portraits of children living in the Ukraine, and wanted to make them on our press.  I was intrigued, but it wasn’t until I saw the photos that I understood what makes this project so special--the eyes of the children looked back at me.  Among them was a little girl with a blue crocheted hat, a little boy with spaces in his teeth, another boy with big eyes looking out from under a newsboy cap, and a pretty girl approaching her teens.  All I could do was imagine what these children have seen in their young lives.  I saw sadness mixed with the playfulness of childhood, and it touched me.  Kristi, Catherine, and I agreed that we wanted to embrace these children.  Then I realized the point of the program is to instill awareness and kindness in the students creating the portraits.  Through this experience, they connect with children in another part of the world, and see the faces behind the stories they hear about on the news.

I witnessed that caring firsthand.  I watched the students compare the photos with the portraits, carefully striving to capture the essence of the child.  Kristi and Catherine explained how to mix the right shades of yellow ochre, magenta, and leaf green to get the right skin tone, so that the children’s faces would look natural and not like masks.  There was excitement as we cranked each portrait through the press.

Memory Project made a video of the Ukrainian children as they were presented with the portraits.  It was a moving experience we all watched together, and it became apparent why it is called a memory project.  The Ukranian children have a tangible remembrance of their youth, and the art students will always remember the person living 4,800 miles away whose portrait became their common bond.  View the video by clicking the button below.

-Dawn Daniels

Update: Robbins Reef Lighthouse

Last season we succeeded in reaching our first major goal at the lighthouse: to provide light and ventilation.  This season we started on the eight closet, room, and cabinet doors; they had been painted in various colors, and we removed and stripped them last, and we are restoring the hinges and doorknobs.  We will sand and poly them, and put them back up in rooms we scraped and painted white.  We have no photographs of the doors in the early days of the lighthouse and decided to leave them unpainted; the wood is beautiful, and the wood surfaces will be easy to maintain.  Other doors on the agenda include north door to the kitchen; it was blown in by superstorm Sandy.  Jeff Wollman’s Reicon crew put a temporary steel plate over the aperture, but it’s time to build a new, tight door and threshold.

The watch deck is one of the loveliest places at the lighthouse; it leads to the balcony and has eight round windows in the ceiling that cast light down from the light deck.  Glen Miller’s crew had removed an old, rusty stove pipe that stretched across the ceiling, and the Coast Guard, NOAA, and the New York Wheel moved their equipment down to the deck below to make that deck easier to navigate.  In the process, the Coast Guard installed a new LED light we dubbed “Little Green” and gave us the legacy light.  It’s now part of our Robbins Reef Lighthouse: A Home in the Harbor exhibition. 

Robbins Reef is a Noble Crew project, and they rock it.  If you want to work out there, let us know—but remember we get to it by boat—Glen Miller donates the trips out and back—and there’s an 18’ ladder up to the promenade.  When we go out, we do satisfying and pleasant work!

-Erin Urban

Restoring Historic Shinbone Alley

Shinbone Alley is not the first slim walkway to be so-named; there is another one on the north side of Bleeker Street, east of Lafayette Avenue in Manhattan, and it had its name as of 1825.  Had the odd appellation something to do with bumping shins on rusty pails?  Or getting kicked in the shins?  For some reason I thought it might have been a place where you could get your shoes shined…

I’ve often wondered how our Shinbone Alley at Snug Harbor got its name, and if the Snugs named it.  Perhaps they also named the Bumboat, the little cafe on Shinbone where they could get a snack, and I would wager that they dubbed the Sailors’ Snug Harbor cemetery “Monkey Hill,” but I have no proof.

Our Shinbone Alley runs behind the front National Historic Landmarks from E Building to A Building.  Arching over it are crosswalks that connect the front five former Harbor dormitories to three of the five buildings behind them, which were also dormitories.  The shady trees and crosswalks and the patches of grass between the buildings are beautifully designed for gardens and gatherings.  We want to bring back the atmosphere that pervaded Shinbone in the days when residents and staff spilled out from the dorms and the kitchen and dining hall on to the shady bluestone walkway to relax.

We worked with Snug Harbor staff, and the new Snug Harbor caterer, Relish, to remove the food-waste dumpster behind our building to a sensible location on the perimeter of the site; its shell will become one of eight new bike racks that are being added to the cultural center. 

The Richmond County Savings Foundation gave us a Green Initiative grant with which we could buy plants and make gardens, and the Snug Harbor’s horticulturists designed two new gardens and added plants to the one between our building and Building E.  We re-established safe pedestrian access along the Alley by blocking it with an H-bitt from a tugboat that Caddell Dry Dock supplied.  Shinbone’s surface and moats will no longer be damaged by truck traffic, and parents of kids in the Childrens Harbor Montessori School are especially happy that it has resumed its role as a thoroughfare for pedestrians only. 

Noble Crewfolk and our staff spent a couple of days cleaning Shinbone, weeding the moats, making garden areas, and painting railings, archways, and doors.  Our hope is to raise the money we need to repair the walkway surface because it has trip hazards and poor drainage.  A yet-unrealized dream is that Snug Harbor will reopen the Bumboat as a coffee shop.  Restoring the Alley is the first step we have taken outside the doors of our building to reveal the history of Sailors’ Snug Harbor.  If you would like to help with money or time, please let us know!  Many thanks to our great Noble Crew!

-Erin Urban

REVIEW of "Perspective: Robbins Reef"

New book illuminates colorful New York lighthouse history
A review by Michael J. Fressola, art critic and guest contributor

On the book cover is a detail of Pamela Talese's 2015 oil on panel, The Barbican of the Kill van Kull.

Perspective: Robbins Reef, the latest book published by the Noble Maritime Collection, is a history of the 133-year old lighthouse (just off the Island’s North Shore), an exhibit catalogue, and an illustrated progress report.

Adopted by the museum, Robbins Reef was pretty careworn by 2011 when the museum signed the deed.  Nineteen months later, a 32-foot seawater surge—Superstorm Sandy slammed the place, wreaking havoc. Fortunately, the damage was reparable. Other harbor beacons didn’t weather the onslaught.  Old Orchard was obliterated. Romer Shoal Light was severely compromised.

Today Robbins Reef is a work in progress. Every few weeks, a volunteer work detail sails out to paint, scrape walls, clean, and make repairs.  Restored windows have been installed.  When all is shipshape again, tours and educational programs will be launched there.

The place has history.  Arguably, no lighthouse in the area has quite such a compelling backstory.  Researched by the Collection’s founding director Erin Urban and curator Megan Beck, the story centers on the indefatigable Kate Walker (1848-1931), the keeper who made her home in the light for 33 years and raised her family there singlehandedly.

While photographs depict a tiny, 4’10” woman in ladylike Victorian attire, hers was hardly a genteel life.  Before electrification, oil lamps provided the guiding light and they required refilling every few hours.  An uninterrupted night’s sleep? All but impossible.

Walker, widowed at 42, inherited the job from her husband.  She made her own repairs, braved all kinds of weather, and rescued 50 shipwrecked people during her tenure.  And guess who rowed the kids back and forth to Staten Island to school.  Still her lighthouse home had all the comforts of the day, including a phonograph (she liked Caruso).  She entertained friends and family there.  Within the harborscape, Robbins Reef occupies prime real estate.  Situated picturesquely at the mouth of the Kill van Kull, one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, it figured in prints and paintings produced by marine artists.

Perspective: Robbins Reef includes a history of the lighthouse and its most famous keeper, Kate Walker and her family. It is also a catalogue for the exhibition Robbins Reef Lighthouse: A Home in the Harbor, and features color reproductions of all the art in the show, including Kathy Krantz Fieramosca’s oil on linen, Homage to Kate Walker.

As a catalogue, Perspective documents the exhibit Robbins Reef Lighthouse: A Home in the Harbor (through 2017).  Original furnishings recreate the round-roomed Walker household. What fun to be a child in such a setting.

As a fine-art showcase, the book includes historic depictions like Sunset, New York Bay, painted by the gifted Hudson River School romantic Edward Moran (1829-1901).  Moran presented the lighthouse gloriously backlit in a golden sunset.  With more realistic intentions, Noble drew the place quickly and fluidly at eye level, while rowing himself around the harbor.

New works of art, commissioned by the museum and exhibited during the run of A Home in the Harbor, amplify the viewer’s sense of Robbins Reef and deepen the acquaintance with Kate Walker.  Among the participants are museum trustee and noted marine artist John Stobart, R.A., and William Behnken, N.A., Michael Falco, Kathy Krantz Fieramosca, Elle Finn, DB Lampman, Michael McWeeney, Denise Mumm, Roger Sherry, Stephen Szoke (a descendant of Kate Walker), Bascove, and Sarah Yuster.

The 97-page soft-cover book, handsomely designed by Assistant Director Ciro Galeno, Jr. and written by Erin Urban, is available at the museum or through its digital bookstore.

Access History: Our progress in studying Sailors’ Snug Harbor

When I started working in Building D in 1992, I was struck by how often people came to the door—banged on it forcefully because we had no bell—and were eager to talk about their relationship with Sailors’ Snug Harbor. Stories that intrigued me, ignorant as I was, included one from a friend who as a girl played in the hayloft of the Snug Harbor barn and witnessed the birth of a calf there, and that of another friend who carried a tin half-gallon can of beer for lunch to his uncle, who worked at the site. Little by little I began to comprehend the enormity and complexity of the famous home, and how important it is that it be studied.

By their eerie presence, the Snugs, who have left traces of pipe smoke in the halls from time to time, seemed to be urging us to do that, as did Noble and Peter Stanford, who charged us with bringing “the spirit of the sailors back.” (It still lingered…) We restored a residents’ dormitory, collected thousands of artifacts and documents, and the Trustees of Sailors’ Snug Harbor laced their rich collection at the museum so that we could tell with fullness and accuracy the story of the retirement home. It was a pioneer in providing access to the disabled and a ground-breaking example of an assisted-living facility.

We designed our oral history project, Haunting Building D, and prepared a questionnaire for people to use when recalling their memories of the home. If you would do that yourself, we would be grateful because these accounts tell us as much or more as an artifact would. The questionnaire is available below, or you can call or email us, and we will send you a paper copy.

You can also access the recently unveiled digital collection, a product of the labors of our wonderful partners at the Stephen B. Luce Library at SUNY Maritime College, which houses Sailors’ Snug Harbor documents, overseen by its director, Kristin Hart. The digital collection, funded by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) and hosted on DCMNY.org, includes approximately 1,500 photographs and 1,500 registry pages of mariners who came to Snug Harbor between 1860 and 1930. The registry record provides an overview of the resident’s career, health, and activities at the Harbor.

This step forward opens up new avenues for scholarly research and genealogical inquiries. On April 30 we will present a panel discussion in collaboration with the Luce Library staff that will include an overview of the Harbor in its heyday and the Library’s website and its access.

—Erin Urban

Light, Tight, and Bright

The Noble Crew in action at Robbins Reef Lighthouse

This restored window is located in the curved stairwell, outside the sitting room.  Stripped of a century’s worth of paint, the window casement and sill are made of oldgrowth heart pine. PHOTO: Peter Yuschak

Last summer and fall were productive at Robbins Reef.  With the help of the folks at Miller’s Launch and the skill of their great captains diving through wakes, we went out often.  We restorated eight casement windows that had been shrouded in plywood and steel since the Coast Guard automated the light in 1966. The round rooms on the first three levels and the landings in the stairwell are full of light. It is astonishing.

With funds from the New York Landmarks Conservancy, coupled with matching funds from the museum’s art auction and the extraordinary help of the Noble Crew under the supervision of craftsman Roger Sherry, we ground down and painted the exterior casements, removed the paint from the interior casements, and removed the windows. Sherry then brought them to his studio in Virginia to restore them. As expected, the window frames and the old-growth heart-pine interior casements and sills had withstood salt air since 1883. Most of the glass is intact, and some panes have a faint pattern of light-blue pitting. The copper slides, the tracks the windows travel up and down in, and original pins that hold the windows open that we carefully retrieved are testaments to 19th century craftsmen.

The light that fills the kitchen, sitting room, and Kate’s bedroom is amplified by the walls and ceilings, which we scraped and painted white. Kate said she had to keep the place “bright with paint,” and we will too. We also removed the interior doors and stripped them. (Try doing that in a place with no running water). Under the many layers of paint dating back to Kate’s time we found heart pine and oak.

We are so grateful to Crew members Gerry Barton, Andrew Blancero, Cooper, Laura Kennedy, Greg Orlando, Peter Patron, Barbara Pezzengrilli, Tim Pouch, Annie Rech, Nan Smith, Chris Steffins, Damon Urban, and Lisa and Peter Yuschak—and to our trustees Brian De Forest, Kevin Mahoney, Eileen Montanez, and Sam Turvey. They endured some mighty dirty weather!

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Lighthouse Log Book is a series of stream of consciousness writings by Executive Director Erin Urban after each Crew date at Robbins Reef.  It’s informal and meant to impart a sense of the energy of the volunteers and the work they accomplish in regular seven-hour workdays to Robbins Reef Lighthouse.

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My Studio: A new exhibition of plein air drawings by John A. Noble

Hearkening back to Noble’s early years exploring New York Harbor in his rowboat, the museum is exhibiting 23 drawings in its new exhibition, My Studio: A selection of plein air drawings by John A. Noble, 1930-1950.  

The drawings are Noble’s first, fresh takes on the Harbor landscape.  They show his unedited response to the world and the growth of his mastery in charcoal and pencil. He did hundreds of drawings in this fertile period, on the spot, in all kinds of weather. He rarely parted with one of them and kept them as his personal resource file.  

My Studio takes the viewer to Port Johnston, the boneyard of abandoned vessels on the Kill Van Kull where Noble set up a studio in 1939.  He first saw Port Johnston at age 15 from the Anna Sophia on his first schooner trip in 1928, and he was astonished by what it symbolized. The sailing ships that lined the pier represented the waning days of the Age of Sail. It was a sight, he said, which “affected me for life.”

Noble was struck by the appearance of the Statue of Liberty from the back. In this study he sketched and made notes about it and the surrounding landscape from the perspective of the old Lehigh Railroad docks at Black Tom, NJ. (Pencil on paper, 9” x 12”)

After returning from the trip, he went to the boneyard and befriended and cared for its watchman, Tillison Gorton. After Tillison died, he took over his job and set up a studio in Tillison’s cabin, the teak saloon of a European yacht. In the 1940s the pier began to collapse, and to save his studio, he built a barge to float it on out of the wings of an abandoned Bethlehem Steel dry dock, “each one painfully loose,” he said. He later commented that he did not think there was anyplace else where he could draw.

My Studio includes examples of the fruits of those rowboat explorations, like drawings of two floating grain elevators operated by International Elevating Company, the three rail bridges at the mouth of the Hackensack River, and an abandoned coal pocket in the upper reaches of Newton Creek.

The drawings are part of a major gift from the Noble Family Collection. They have donated over 600 drawings and Noble’s lithographs, paintings, writings, and his 6,000 photographs that chronicle New York Harbor in the last century. The book John A. Noble: The Rowboat Drawings includes drawings in the exhibition and is on sale in the museum shop and through our digital bookstore.