After years of deterioration and neglect, RIOC is improving Lighthouse Park with repairs and collaborative efforts. While troubling elements remain, they are being addressed. Are we on the way to restoring – even improving – the traditional pleasures at the north end of Roosevelt Island?
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
Improving Lighthouse Park has been on our mind over the last few years as our articles have shown. So, we didn’t expect it so soon after RIOC’s interim executives stepped in, but the state agency surprised us.
We visited last week before snow and ice accented the park with a stroke of winter. It was more like an early spring day. Our main interest was the condition of The Girl Puzzle, the internationally acclaimed sculpture that opened in 2021, then fell almost immediately into neglect and disrepair.
Efforts are underway aimed at restoring the artwork that’s become a black mark on Roosevelt Island. We’ll have more on that later.
Improving Lighthouse Park
Before and after…
When we visited in October, this is what we saw. Retaining walls set in place, battling the endless push of erosion as weather and gravity nudge soils to the shore, rotted.
But now, committed in its first month of action, interim RIOC was hard at work.
Bryant Daniels, Communications and Community Affairs Director at RIOC, explains.
“The short wooden retaining walls inside Lighthouse Park just south of the Girl Puzzle Monument were in disrepair after years of wear and tear in a salty air environment. In January, the RIOC Maintenance crew assessed the situation and custom ordered new wooden posts to replace the ones that were too badly damaged to remain in place.
“This past week the crew began taking out the old beams and installing the new ones. We’ve also ordered more new beams to make additional repairs to the walls, but they are all custom order and will take some time to arrive, meaning the project will continue for several more weeks.
“Once all the older beams are removed and the newer ones are installed, the walls will be repainted, resulting in a safer, more aesthetically pleasing set-up for Lighthouse Park visitors.
“Credit to the RIOC Maintenance team, led by Mehdi Omrani, for their hard work on this project.”
Elsewhere in the Park
As reported earlier, RIOC is working with various Roosevelt Island groups as they build out an urban forest, now in its infancy. That work continues as the grounds adjust as conditions demand and improvements beckon.
As goslings arrive in the spring, some might find homes on the north end for a change.
While the old growth trees show off their lyric architecture, a row of picnic tables await the shady escapes of summer.
But The Girl Puzzle…
Extended neglect of The Girl Puzzle laid disgrace over Roosevelt Island. How could any community let this happen?
RIOC could not be shamed into reversing its neglect or even explaining it….
Fenced off from public view, the artwork looks smaller, the figures sad.
But there are rumblings from RIOC that improving Lighthouse Park means fixing up The Girl Puzzle. Maybe, in the spring or summer, we can get a another ribbon-cutting, cementing the promise that the above, once fixed, will never happen again.
A Different Kind of Bet
For years, Roosevelt Island did not behave like a system constrained by limits. Internally, the budget was often treated less as a boundary and more as a reservoir to be used.
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