For the love of history: Finding home in a lighthouse

See how this alumna turned her passion for historical architecture into a lifelong project with a life-changing impact.

By Jenevieve Rowley-Davis

Growing up in a small town near Syracuse, N.Y., Sheila Consaul ’80 was awestruck by the storied homes with fascinating columns, pillars and porches. With the tales of the Finger Lakes at her fingertips, it’s safeto say Consaul was a bona fide history lover before she ever made her wayto Bradley. 

Upon coming to BU, Consaul was thrilled at the opportunity to live and study amongst the astounding architecture of buildings like Bradley Hall, Westlake Hall, Dingledine Music Center and the rest of the Bradley campus. As the years passed and Consaul became a tour guide for the university, she became incredibly familiar with the rich history of BU and our founder, Lydia Moss Bradley. She became part of the university’s history herself as a member of Bradley’s first women’s tennis team.

“It was so easy for me to show people around and be incredibly enthusiastic about what an amazing institution it is,” Consaul said. “By the time I was giving tours my senior year, I had studied abroad, I had interned in Washington, D.C., I had played tennis—I had really taken advantage of a lot of opportunities.”

That internship would lead to her first job on Capitol Hill. Starting out as a legislative assistant, Consaul would spend the next few decades in D.C., but she dreaded the hot, humid summers every year and wished for a cool respite. After graduate school, she started working in communications consulting and media training, and longed for a summer home. But just any old single-family wasn’t going to fit the bill.

“I have always loved doing historic preservation work.” Consaul said. “I worked on renovating a previous historic home in Manassas, Va.”

Reaching out to her network for leads on potential historic homes, Consaul was intrigued to discover, per the National Lighthouse Preservation Act of 2000, the General Services Administration (the federal government’s real estate agency) was slowly making surplus lighthouses available to public buyers.

Thus began the years-long hunt to acquire one such surplus lighthouse.

History for Sale

Consaul’s future home came on the market in 2009. Typically, these surplus lighthouses are first offered to the local community or historical society, and the case was no different here. However, the people of Fairport Harbor, Ohio were already at capacity. They had previously formed a historical society in the 1940s to take over a lighthouse in town, which lit the skies from 1825 until it was decommissioned in 1925 in favor of a new lighthouse—Consaul’s future summer home. Thus, bidding for the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light was open to the public.

But Consaul wasn’t the one with the winning bid.

The man who did win wanted to develop the lighthouse into a commercial venture, which the Army Corps of Engineers promptly refused as the building is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2010, there was another auction and a new winner—he was also found in default. In 2011, the rules of the auction changed—if the winning bidder was found in default, then the second-highest bidder would get the first right of refusal.

Just over a week after the third auction closed, the highest bidder was found in default. Consaul, the second highest bidder, had secured the lighthouse.

Real-Deal Renovations

“I started renovating Fairport Harbor West Lighthouse in earnest in 2012,” Consaul said. “It’s been a very long road and I am still on it. It’s sort of a perpetual project, but it’s pretty much getting to the end. When I first went inside, it had not been painted or cared for since the last keepers moved out in 1948.”

In the near-13 years she has owned Fairport Harbor West, Consaul’s done a complete renovation. She’s gone through nearly 150 gallons of paint inside and outside. Now outfitted with three full bedrooms, three full bathrooms, a kitchen, living room, dining room and laundry room, her home is about 3,000 square feet, sleeps about 10 and is completely off the grid—it’s been run by solar since the ’90s.

“The utilities have been the greatest challenge. We take for granted walking into a room and turning a switch and having the light come on, or having the toilet flush, or having running water come out of the faucet. When you don’t have that, it’s a whole different ballgame.”

The positioning of Consaul’s lighthouse—at the end of a breakwall only accessible by boat or on foot down a 20-minute path through a state park—made many of the logistics for renovation incredibly difficult. Equipment and supplies for the construction workers, plumbers and electricians had to either be carried in by hand or brought by boat. Large items like the kitchen cabinets, the granite for the countertops, the furniture and the generator had to be transported on a large barge with a crane.

Now, Consaul has composting toilets as well as a cistern in the basement, which is where she collects rainwater from the roof. The rainwater is treated and can be used for cooking, laundry and showers, though she’s sure to specify it is not heated and it is not cooled. The logistics of simply living don’t end there though, given the 20-minute walk it takes to get back to her car.

“I always take a backpack both ways. I subscribe to the pack it in, pack it out philosophy. Every time you go out, you take trash, recyclables. Then when you come back in, you’re hauling supplies.”

It’s a lot of work. But, there are quiet moments too.

“The weather watching is incredible. You can watch storms come from far away. They have a lot of water spouts, tremendous thunder and lightning storms in the summer.”

Plus, the renovation process has brought her closer to other Bradley alumni. “I’ve been very fortunate in that I know several Bradley alums who live in the area and others have traveled to help me renovate.”

With everything from painting, to hauling supplies, to design advice, Bradley alums including: David Boettner ’80; Neal Willen ’80; Joyce Klekowski Bowers ’83 and Dennis Bowers ’81; Nancy Cooney Taub ’80 and Larry Taub ’80; Bob Thuss ’78; Julie Lynch Leonard ’80 and John Leonard ‘75 as well as Consaul’s first Bradley roommate, Cindy Baker ’79 have all offered a helping hand.

Sharing the Story

Nowadays, Consaul’s relationship with the lighthouse is largely defined by her relationship with the community and the lighthouse’s visitors. Much like the tours she used to give on Bradley’s campus, Consaul takes great pride in sharing the history behind her storied home.

“It’s really important for me to embrace that I’m just a steward of the lighthouse. I happen to be the one who bought it, the one who’s repairing it and I get to spend my summers here, but hopefully, it will be there another hundred years. It was part of this community way before I bought it.”

On top of offering private tours (and doing her day job remotely) while at the lighthouse in the summer, Consaul hosts an open house for the community every year around the lighthouse’s birthday—it was first lit on June 9, 1925, and the beacon still functions as an active aid to navigation. It is wired and maintained by the Coast Guard separately from all of Consaul’s equipment.

“People have all of these notions about lighthouse keepers and the history and what happens at different lighthouses. There are so many movies, shows, books and podcasts that explore lighthouse living. I can see why people are curious,” Consaul explained. “It can be very, very lonely out there. Once the park closes at dusk, I’m pretty much locked in and I’m out there by myself if a storm comes through.”

Consaul finds herself in rare company, as more and more lighthouses fall victim to erosion or natural disasters or are decommissioned and face destruction.

“They’re not building lighthouses anymore. There’s only so many of them left and they’re worth saving. They’re absolutely worth saving.”