The Penfield Reef Light, about 1 mile off the beach in Fairfield, Connecticut, in Long Island Sound, is for sale at a government auction. The going price so far: $360,000.
If you buy it, that’s just the starting price. The lighthouse was damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, although the government has worked to restore it, adding a new roof and hurricane-resistant windows. Still, the interior is definitely in the “fixer-upper” stage. Indeed, the Government Services Administration website announcing the auction says “THE CONDITION OF THE PROPERTY IS NOT WARRANTED.”
The Penfield Reef Light, marking a submerged reef that’s mostly uncovered at low tide, comes with a history, and even a ghost. In the mid-1800s, the reef was known as the Blue Line Graveyard after a string of Blue Line barges ran into it. The steamer Rip Van Winkle, loaded with passengers, grounded there in 1864. (Several boats still manage to run into it every year.)
The lighthouse was completed in 1874, a 51-feet-high, octagonal wood and granite structure built in the Second Empire style, with a two-story keeper’s quarters. There’s also a pier and boat landing.
The ghost story dates to 1916, when the keeper, Frederick A. Jordan, got in a small rowboat in stormy conditions just before Christmas to visit his family on shore. As he rowed away, the boat capsized. Rudolph Iten, the assistant keeper, watched as Jordan drifted away, clinging to the overturned boat. The conditions were so bad that Iten couldn’t help.
Jordan’s body washed up on Long Island the next March. Iten said that in subsequent years he felt Jordan’s presence in the keeper’s quarters, even to the extent of opening the logbook to the day he drowned.
The Penfield Reef Light was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1990. Today, fishermen and kayakers are to be found near Penfield reef and the lighthouse. I’ve walked about halfway out (at low tide) myself.
The GSA put it up for auction on line, under the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act, in 2021, starting at $100,000 with further bids in $10,000 increments. The auction closed with a winning bid of $360,000 on August 12, 2021. Now, it turns out, that deal has fallen through, and the GSA is opening an auction again. You can find the details below:
https://realestatesales.gov/gsaauctions/aucdsclnk?sl=BOSTN121002001
