Historic Vessel Flowers Into Second Life as a Floating Museum
Amid a local landscape dotted by cultural institutions subterranean (the National 9/11 Memorial & Museum) and minutely specialized (the Skyscraper Museum), there is only one that can make a literal claim to buoyancy: the Lilac. Moored at Pier 25 in the Hudson River Park (near Harrison Street) and open free to the public, this museum ship is a retired Coast Guard vessel that carried supplies to lighthouses and maintained buoys from 1933 to 1972. America’s only surviving steam-powered lighthouse tender, she is also listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
“I got involved with Lilac after spending several years as an independent preservation advocate, seeking to preserve former industrial sites like the Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn,” says ship director Mary Habstritt (at right in white cap, describing the role of a lighthouse tender to PS 234 students). She and her former partner Gerry Weinstein founded the Lilac Preservation Project in 2003 to save the vessel. “We operate on a shoestring and do a lot. We get wonderful young volunteers from local high schools, like Stuyvesant, and several have been promoted to part-time supervisory crewmembers and more than one has gone on to a career in the maritime field.”
“We explain the critical infrastructure of lighthouses, buoys and other aids to navigation to visitors to whom it is unseen,” she adds. “In a city of islands, it is surprising how few people know what a buoy looks like, or how important it is to keeping waterborne commerce moving.”
The ongoing restoration project is transforming Lilac into a venue for exhibits, maritime education, and community activities. During this metamorphosis, the historic vessel is open free to the public from 2pm to 6pm on Saturdays and Sundays (weather permitting), and for special events through the end of October. Among these are an exhibit, “Beacons of the Delaware,” opening August 3, which will feature histories of the lighthouses tended by Lilac during her decades of service. The exhibition is timed to coincide with Coast Guard Day on August 4 and National Lighthouse Day on August 7.