The Little Red Lighthouse — the 40-foot iron tower on Jeffrey’s Hook in Fort Washington Park, directly under the George Washington Bridge — is Manhattan’s last remaining lighthouse, and one afternoon a year the Urban Park Rangers open it up. This year that afternoon is Saturday, Oct. 3, 12–4 p.m., and it is free.

The logistics that matter

  • Saturday, Oct. 3, 2026, 12–4 p.m. at the Little Red Lighthouse in Fort Washington Park, Washington Heights. No ticket or registration for the festival itself.
  • Tours are the hard part. Parks states the structure is more than 140 years old and in need of care, so interior access is capped again this year: tickets are handed out on site at 12 p.m., first come first served, limited to the first 200 attendees, each timed to a 40-minute window.
  • The listing says it plainly: if a tour is the reason you are going, arrive before noon.
  • The site is listed as an accessible location. Contact: (212) 870-3089 or SOH@riversideparknyc.org.

What’s actually happening

  • Ranger-led lighthouse tours.
  • Readings of the 1942 picture book that made the place famous, The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge.
  • Live music and dance from Moosiki Kids, the Leadlights Ensemble and General Mischief Dance Theatre, plus a presentation of Jessica Ann Carp’s Little Red Lighthouse Musical.
  • Local organizations on site for the afternoon.

The history is the reason to go beyond the view. The tower was reassembled at Jeffrey’s Hook in 1921, after serving as the North Hook Beacon at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, until it went obsolete in 1917. Then the George Washington Bridge was built directly over it, opening in 1931 and making the light redundant. The Coast Guard decommissioned it in 1948 and moved to auction it off — and stopped, largely because children who had grown up on the book objected. The deed went to NYC Parks in 1951. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979, designated a city landmark in 1991, and relit in 2002.

So the actual move on Oct. 3 is a simple one: show up before noon, get a timed ticket, and climb into a lighthouse that exists today because a generation of kids refused to let it be sold.