Jeffrey's Hook Light, forty feet of red cast iron on a rock in the Hudson at the foot of Fort Washington Park, with the George Washington Bridge crossing the sky above it: the near tower of bare steel lattice rising out of the frame, two decks of traffic, the cables dropping to the far tower on the Palisades side. You stand on the greenway with the river on your left, the railroad behind the trees on your right, and the lighthouse door open. The New Yorkers hang on the seawall, in the picnic shelter, on the fence panels and inside the tower up its stair.
Jeffrey's Hook Light stood first as the North Hook Beacon at Sandy Hook, New Jersey, until 1917, when it became obsolete; in 1921 it was reconstructed at its present spot on Jeffrey's Hook by the United States Lighthouse Board. It is 40 ft (12 m) tall, a red tower with a white lantern, and carried a 12 inch (300 mm) lens. The 1942 children's book The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge, written by Hildegarde Swift and illustrated by Lynd Ward, made it famous; when dismantling was proposed the public outcry came largely from children who were fans of the book, and the Coast Guard, which had decommissioned the light in 1948, signed its deed over to the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation on July 23, 1951. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on May 29, 1979, designated a New York City landmark on May 14, 1991, and relit by the city in 2002. It stands in Fort Washington Park along the Hudson River, reached by the Hudson River Greenway. The George Washington Bridge above it opened to traffic on October 25, 1931, the day after its dedication, with a main span of 3,500 feet (1,100 m), a total length of 4,760 feet (1,450 m) and towers 604 feet (184 m) tall; Othmar Ammann was chief engineer and Cass Gilbert consulting architect. The towers were to be encased in concrete and granite in a Revival style, but the stone facades were postponed in 1929 and left off for cost. It carries 14 lanes, eight on the upper level and six on the lower, which opened on August 29, 1962; four 3 foot (0.91 m) main cables carry the deck on 592 suspender cables from 38 to 674 feet long, and it is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge, with over 101 million vehicles in 2025. The flag hung from it on special occasions measures 90 feet by 60 feet and weighs 450 pounds.
The red conical tower with its white lantern and black roof on the rock at the water, the door on the landward side and the spiral stair inside, the George Washington Bridge tower of open steel lattice with its two crossed braces, the upper and lower decks with their traffic, the four main cables and the suspenders, the far tower small against the Palisades, the Hudson with a tour boat, a tug and barge and a group of kayaks, the greenway and its joggers, the stone seawall and the riprap, the railroad behind the chain link fence and the trees, and the gulls. Mood: late afternoon under the great gray bridge. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.