'Forgotten Lighthouse' in Sea Isle City remembered in Nashville,TN
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
'Forgotten lighthouse' in Sea Isle City remembered in Nashville,Tenn.
Published: Saturday, December 8, 2007 Press of Atlantic City
By BRIAN IANIERI
Some of the biggest advocates for preserving a former lighthouse in Sea Isle City are, surprisingly enough, two middle schools in Tennessee.
Diana Branch, a sixth-grader in the Meigs Magnet School in Nashville, was in New Jersey in October with her grandmother, Denise Branch.
The 12-year-old girl, who is studying lighthouses in school, participated in the annual New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge to spot all the lighthouses along the coast.
The girl wrote a paper for school about the trip.
Through a friend in her 4-H Club, the girl picked the former Ludlum Beach Lighthouse (now a summer rental without a light) as a service learning project and is raising money for it.
Denise Branch's grandson, Anthony, 11, is doing something similar in his school, she said.
"The children are all for it," Denise said. "Most of the people in this school are connected to the music industry. The parents are behind this also, which tickled me because I didn't think anybody but me liked lighthouses. In this state, you see hills and cows."
The support at the schools in Tennessee offers a glimpse of the enthusiasm people have for lighthouses and maritime history - even for an old building that has not resembled a lighthouse in almost 80 years.
Casual pedestrians in Sea Isle City would not know they were passing a former lighthouse unless they were told.
The lighthouse is a six-unit summer rental two blocks from the ocean on Landis Avenue.
Built in 1885, it was taken out of service in 1924, stripped of its handmade Fresnel lens, sold at auction and relocated twice.
Last year, an effort began to move and restore the building, whose owner plans to replace it with more modern accommodations.
Bob Uhrmann, founder of the Friends of the Ludlum Beach Lighthouse, said he is looking for a place to move the building and then gradually do the fundraising to restore it and convert it into a museum.
He doesn't want to see it demolished.
"It's slower than I would like it, but we're still making steady progress," Uhrmann said.
Charles Adams, who has owned the property at 3414 Landis Ave. for almost 15 years, acknowledges that the building is nothing much to look at.
"It's an old, old building. I don't want to flatter myself. It's not like I tell anybody I'm living in an old lighthouse," he said. "I'm living in a building that should have been in a landfill 80 years ago, and it's not."
But Adams said that although the group's moving and restoring the building would be an expensive proposition, it could add charm to the city.
"It's good for Sea Isle because Sea Isle - they need something. It's getting to be a bedroom community," he said. "We've lost everything in the past 15 years."
Uhrmann said he is working with the city to find a site for the lighthouse and remove it from Adams' property quickly before he plans to rebuild.
Adams said there's no rush.
"I am sensitive to their needs. By the time I get approval (to build), if they want me to wait a year or two years, I can wait," he said.
The Ludlum Beach Lighthouse has been dubbed "the forgotten lighthouse"
It was sold for its material in 1924 and replaced with a 40-foot-tall steel tower with an automatically flashing gas light.
The building itself was first moved to 31st Street and Landis Avenue and made into a residence and moved again in the 1940s to its present location
Jack Tasso, 58, grew up in Avalon and now lives in California.
As Ludlum Beach Lighthouse historians discovered recently, Tasso is the great great grandson of Joshua Hand Reeves, the lighthouse's first keeper.
"We were told the lighthouse was destroyed in a hurricane," Tasso said.
"We thought it was a long-gone building. That's what I remember from my grandmother telling me about it," he said.
Philip Bur III, who wrote a historical account of the lighthouse, said the discovery of the relative of Reeves is helping shed light on the look of the lighthouse itself and the way it was used.
Tasso has already supplied several photographs of the building and pieces of furniture that were inside.
Correspondence the family has retained highlights the personal side of lighthouse living, Bur said.
"We knew nothing about this guy at all - Joshua Reeves," he said.
Reeves, a former merchant seaman, worked at the lighthouse for about 30 years, most of its existence. In the lighthouse, he raised a family and the children moved away when they grew older.
After Reeves' wife, Josephine died, his son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter moved into the lighthouse with him, Bur said.
To e-mail Brian Ianieri at The Press:
BIanieri@pressofac.com
To see the original Press of Atlantic City article, click the following link:
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/local/capemay/story/7521445p-7421563c.html
