One of New Yorks few active lighthouses which is also a private residence has listed for $1.49M
This sure puts the house in lighthouse.One of New York’s last active lighthouses — still shining over Lake Ontario more than a century after its first beam — is now on the market for $1.49 million.Welcome to the Braddock Point Lighthouse, a meticulously restored 130-year-old property in Parma, near Rochester.While dozens of lighthouses dot the Great Lakes, few remain operational — and even fewer are privately owned.
This one is both.“The house retains a lot of its original integrity,” Harlan Furbush, the Keller Williams Realty agent representing the listing, told the Democrat & Chronicle.“There’s just so much great history here.”“The current owner is one of only four private owners,” Furbush told The Post.Perched just west of Braddock Bay in a section known as Bogus Point — so named for its reputation as a drop point for counterfeit smugglers — the lighthouse was built in 1895 and first lit in 1896.Commissioned by Congress to close a 100-mile navigation gap along Lake Ontario’s southern shore, it was constructed using elements salvaged from the Cleveland Lighthouse, including its ornate lantern room, cast-iron stairway and third-order Fresnel lens.The octagonal red-brick tower originally rose 97 feet, but harsh upstate weather conditions took a toll.
By the early 1950s, long vertical cracks compromised the tower’s structure.The light was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1954, and the upper portion was dismantled shortly thereafter.The property fell into disrepair and was used by duck hunters before being purchased in 1957 by Walter and Kay Stone, who began an ambitious restoration.“I’ll never forget my first sight of this place,” Kay Stone previously told Lighthouse Friends.
“It had been unoccupied, neglected and weatherbeaten for years, but it withstood it all, and still stood there proud and strong.”Decades later, a more extensive renovation in the 1990s culminated in the tower’s reconstruction to 65 feet and it...