Looking to buy a lighthouse? Some are for sale

The U.S. government is offering up an island getaway of sorts a mile off the Connecticut coast for a fraction of what others cost — but with any new owner wanting to stay ashore under certain conditions, given the active lighthouse foghorn that comes in the package.

The U.S. General Services Administration is again dangling Penfield Reef Lighthouse, GSA’s latest attempt to dump the landmark off Shoal Point in Fairfield that dates back to the Ulysses S. Grant administration.

On the doorstep to its 150th year providing a boating beacon on the approach to Black Rock Harbor in Bridgeport, Penfield Reef is one of more than a dozen remaining active lighthouses in Connecticut, from Great Captain Island Light off Greenwich to Stonington Harbor Light.

Also up for sale is the Stratford Shoal Lighthouse, technically in New York waters midway across Long Island Sound. And GSA is offering Lynde Point Lighthouse in Old Saybrook for free to nonprofits, educational organizations or local government, one of six that can be had including the picturesque Nobska Lighthouse near the mouth of Woods Hole Harbor in Falmouth, Mass.; and Little Mark Island and Monument in Harpswell, Maine, near the Eagle Island summer home of North Pole explorer Robert Peary.

Penfield Reef was the scene of a milestone in aviation history, as the site of the first helicopter rescue after Igor Sikorsky dispatched one of his earliest helicopter models to rescue two crewmembers of a barge that had gone aground.

The lighthouse comes with the legend of a ghost, after a lightkeeper perished in 1916 while attempting to row ashore in heavy seas.

And in an oddball sidebar to the Penfield Reef Lighthouse saga, a Virginia businessman sought to buy it in 2020 for $280,000, with a business plan to store funerary urns there containing cremated remains. Months later, he admitted to attempting to defraud the U.S. Department of Defense of $4.1 million and was sentenced to a three-and-a-half year prison term.

The town of Fairfield has made a few attempts to purchase the lighthouse in the past two decades with plans to have the Fairfield Museum and History Center manage the property, but raised too little funding for a viable bid.

GSA had a buyer lined up last summer to buy Penfield Reef Lighthouse for $360,000, but the deal was not finalized. The new auction is set to kick off on June 12, with GSA setting a minimum bid price of $100,000 as in past auctions.

The building sustained extensive damage during the 2012 storm Sandy, but the U.S. Coast Guard undertook renovations in 2015 to include a new roof and hurricane-resistant windows and doors.

A dock on the reef requires a short scramble up a ladder to the lightkeeper’s quarters, totaling more than 1,500 square feet. GSA reports asbestos-containing materials have been removed, but that the property is not “fully abated” in its words.