About a half mile from Headlands Beach State Park down a winding, sandy pathway, a red and white lighthouse comes into view at the end of a long breakwall.
It’s one of two historic lighthouses in the village of Fairport Harbor. What distinguishes this one, aside from being 100 years old and still a hundred years younger than the other, is that it leans hard into the “house” part of lighthouse, with three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a full kitchen and multiple living areas, all with stunning lake views in every direction.
“Lighthouses are beloved,” said Sheila Consaul, who lives in the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light, which was first illuminated on June 9, 1925. “There are so many books and movies and romance and drama and danger. I’ve never met anybody who was like, ‘Yeah, they’re okay,’ you know?”
Consaul, who purchased the lighthouse in 2011 for $71,000 in a government auction, has spent the past 14 years restoring her unique summer home to its former glory.
“This one was very attractive to me because you could walk to it,” she said. “It’s in a magnificent state park … had an amazing view and was a pretty good size. So this one ended up being the perfect choice for me.”
The 20-minute walk from the parking lot of the state park to her front door can be a challenging one, especially while carrying groceries. But she said it has become part of the ambience. The walk doesn’t deter visitors, either.
“I had so many people over the years tell me, ‘I have looked at that lighthouse my whole life and never been inside and always wanted to be inside,’” Consaul said.
She has made it an annual tradition, around the lighthouse’s birthday, to invite the community in to see what she’s done with the place. On Saturday, she expects about a thousand visitors for her lighthouse’s centennial celebration. No reservations are required, but people can expect to wait a while to get inside.
“As long as they're patient and don't mind trying to maneuver the stairs, we're happy to have them,” Consaul said.
In its early days, keepers lived in the lighthouse year-round to keep the beacon shining.
“It’s believed that the keepers moved out in the late ’40s when the Coast Guard ran a cable under the water and to the lighthouse to electrify it,” Consaul said. “Prior to that, it would have been kerosene oil, or something that needed that continuous maintenance.”
Though the Coast Guard continued to maintain the beacon, it didn’t maintain the rest of the structure, she said, so it sat empty for more than 60 years, subject to vandals and harsh weather.
Advances in GPS technology have made most seafarers less dependent on lighthouses for navigation, and many have fallen into various states of disrepair.
That, in part, led to Congress passing the National Lighthouse Preservation Act in 2000, which allowed for decommissioned light stations to be made available for purchase by government or nonprofit organizations, or by private parties.
“This whole concept of being able to own one individually is pretty new,” Consaul said.
She had been on the hunt for a summer home that would allow her to spend time away from her full-time residence near Washington, D.C.
“I had also done some historic preservation work and have always loved historic preservation in terms of saving the buildings and the architecture and the methods of how they built things we don’t use now,” Consaul said.
When she saw the Fairport Harbor lighthouse, she knew she was home.
“I love it,” she said. “Has it been more work and cost more money than I ever thought? Absolutely.”
In the early years of the renovations, Consaul had difficulties getting experienced contractors to agree to do work at the remote location, but eventually found an electrician to rewire the whole structure and plumbers to plumb three bathrooms, a kitchen and laundry room.
“Getting water for me was the biggest challenge,” Consaul said. “It took me nine years to get water, not as much from a technical standpoint, but from a bureaucratic standpoint.”
As an individual, she is not permitted to use the lake as a primary water source, so instead she collects rainwater into a cistern. Powered by a generator, pumps take the water out, clean it, treat it and then distribute it throughout the rest of the building.
Moving into the lighthouse brought its own set of challenges, with appliances, furniture and boxes having to be brought over by boat.
“I'm glad I'm done and I am not doing it again,” Consaul said. “People have asked me, ‘Are you going to buy another one?’ No, absolutely not. One lighthouse is plenty.”
In addition to serving as Consaul’s summer home, it still operates as a functioning lighthouse.
“It’s called an active aid to navigation,” she said. “The light still comes on every night at dusk and goes off at dawn. It has a set, recognizable pattern: two seconds on, three seconds off.”
The U.S. Coast Guard maintains the beacon, which is powered by solar panels. At the highest point on the roof is a weather station that measures real-time temperature and wind speed for the National Weather Service.
“I like to say that I'm just a steward,” Consaul said. “I'm just breathing some life into it now, hopefully so it will continue another hundred years.”
Consaul’s lighthouse, at 100, is actually the youngest of the lighthouse family in Fairport Harbor.
The original, the Fairport Harbor Lighthouse, was completed in 1825 and marks its 200th anniversary this year. Today, it operates as a marine museum and research library, housing artifacts and displays that highlight the history of the village and the impact of the Great Lakes on the region.
The original tower was rebuilt in 1871 and is the structure seen today, standing 60 feet tall.
"This lighthouse on the light charts was called the Grand River Light,” said John Ollila, member of the Fairport Harbor Historical Society, which runs the museum. “It marked the entrance to the Grand River.”
From the very beginning, the lighthouse became a symbol for the community.
“This lighthouse was in the community when my mother was growing up,” he said. “She played with the kids that were children of the lighthouse keeper.”
Around the time of World War I, a breakwall was built into the lake and the entrance to the harbor shifted slightly northwest, requiring a new lighthouse farther out – what is now Consaul’s place.
Along with funds set aside by Congress for the new structure was an allocation to have the original tower demolished. But the town wasn’t having it, Ollila said.
“It meant a lot to the community to save the lighthouse,” he said. “And it wasn’t just Fairport, it was all of Lake County that participated in saving it.”
In addition to Consaul’s invitation for visitors at the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light on Saturday, something she’s done every year since 2012, the Fairport Harbor Historical Society will host a community gala on June 21 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the original lighthouse, followed by a boat parade on June 28th in collaboration with Consaul.
