Green Keepers: Holiday in a Rhode Island Light House by Greg Cook

This enchanting, eco-friendly lighthouse on its own private island may have been restored back to its 19th-century heyday, but its ethos of sustainability is all about the future.

When it comes to ecological responsibility there’s a shining light to follow in the harbour of Newport, Rhode Island, the smallest (and possibly the crinkliest) state in the USA. The beacon comes, quite literally, from a mile off shore on Rose Island, where, at the top of a late 19th-century, 35-foot high, octagonal and cylinder-frame tower, a white flash is emitted every six seconds.

This is the Rose Island Lighthouse, and for the past 12 years it has been granted a new lease on life as a living museum.

In the centre of Narragansett Bay, Rose Island Lighthouse’s picture-postcard, two-storey keepers’ cottage was built on the foundations of an 18th-century bastion and began guiding maritime traffic safely in 1870. For the next century, things remained unchanged, and the island and its light were tended by its sole inhabitants -- the keepers and their families.
   
Then, 100 years later, progress took a sudden march -- almost straight over the top of the lighthouse’s head. It came in the form of the Newport Suspension Bridge, a leviathan structure, listed on navigation charts and traversing the bay with its massive beacon-lit pylons. It immediately rendered the little lighthouse obsolete. Without the dedicated maintenance of its keepers, the lighthouse soon succumbed to the ravages of the elements, aided and abetted by some more adventurous vandals, and fell into a state of dereliction.

That was until a dedicated band of locals formed the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation and began an eight-year labour of love, fundraising, cleaning and restoring the building back to its former glory. Their enthusiasm and hard work was finally rewarded in 1993, when the lighthouse was reactivated in a lamp lighting ceremony, and the put back on the charts as a private aid to navigation.

The lighthouse has been restored to its turn-of-the-century appearance, right down to most meticulous details of fixture and fittings. “We intentionally wanted to create an honest, slightly worn, utilitarian look to reflect how the house actually appeared during the early years of the 20th century,” says Charlotte Johnson, executive director of the Rose Island Lighthouse Foundation.
   
However, behind the authentic period furnishings something truly progressive is happening on Rose Island. Beyond the reach of Newport’s utility lines and services, the lighthouse has been refurbished with new environmentally sensitive and energy efficient systems -- supplying its own heat, water and electricity.
   
Visitors can now spend a day on the island or, if you’re a budding Ida Lewis, you can actual stay in the lighthouse for ‘working vacations’ -- short breaks tending the lamp and taking on the mantle of Bona-fide keeper. But along with the keeper’s everyday chores cleaning the glass and polishing the brass, comes a new set of tasks – collecting rainwater and monitoring consumption (the eco-loos here have a ‘three pees or a poo policy’ before the flush), as well as reducing consumption and re-using and recycling waste products.

“Some people have trouble getting to grips with this at first,’ laughs Charlotte, “but they catch on in the end –especially the kids. The real problem we have most of the time is getting our visitors to leave when their vacation’s finished!”