World War II Remnant 'The Pillbox' Is Rescued at Montauk Lighthouse

One of Montauk Point’s original World War II military installations has been rescued from the shoreline, where it essentially floated around, in shambles, for more than four decades, with an eye toward someday restoring it to its rightful position overlooking the Atlantic horizon, where the military had once thought German attack ships might appear.

Since the late 1970s, surfers, fishermen and sightseers have walked past the former concrete blockhouse — known in the military as a “pillbox” — on the shoreline in Turtle Cove, the sand crescent at the western foot of the bluff it once sat atop.

Ironically, perhaps, the pillbox, which came to be its proper name among those who frequented Turtle Cove, was familiar to most over the decades in the upside down position in which it landed after it tumbled off the cliff — with a little help from the U.S. Coast Guard — its foundation pointing skyward.

Over the years, the 45-ton concrete structure shifted and rolled on the shoreline, moved seemingly easily by the shifting sands and storm waves. At times, storms even carried it up onto the revetment’s rocks, where it would sit, sometimes for years, before tumbling back to sea level. At other times, it was so buried in sand that visitors could clamber up onto the rim and even down into the cavity leading toward the upended roof.

When the current revetment around the lighthouse bluff was first constructed in the 1980s, the pillbox was left in place on the beach, to continue its new role as an incongruous curiosity.

But as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began work on the $38 million revetment extension in 2021, the pillbox was found to be in the way of where the new revetment stones would wrap around into Turtle Cove. Rather than leave it to the bulldozers, the engineers asked the Montauk Historical Society, which now owns the lighthouse and the bluff it sits on, if they wanted to save it for some historical value.

“It was the first thing the contractor did, because it was in the way,” said Greg Donohue, the lighthouse erosion specialist for the Historical Society. “They didn’t even know how much it weighed. Some said 100 tons. But it was about 85,000 pounds, so a little more than 40 tons.”

One of the giant cranes that would be used to hoist the 6-ton boulders into place along the revetment lifted the pillbox into the staging area, at the bottom of the hill leading to the lighthouse. It will remain there — it’s in two pieces now — until the Historical Society can figure out how to fund its restoration and repositioning on the hill.

“We don’t know exactly when or where we’re going to put it, we’re working with the state, and we’ll have to find the funding,” Donohue said.

The lighthouse itself is currently undergoing a four-year, $2 million restoration of the tower and lighthouse keeper’s house.

The pillbox was built in 1942, one of the first components of the coastal defense battery at Camp Hero, just to the west of the lighthouse. The main feature of the defense system was the battery of artillery guns, including four 16-inch diameter cannons, aimed seaward from atop the bluffs to protect the corridors to New York Harbor and the bustling Brooklyn Navy Yard.

The bulk of Camp Hero was set up to look from a distance like a small fishing village. Only two military components were built adjacent to the lighthouse: the pillbox and the “fire tower,” the white tower that remains at the lighthouse’s eastern foot, where gunnery sighters could direct fire from Camp Hero’s guns.

Though standing over 15 feet tall now when fully assembled, the pillbox was originally buried into the bluff, so that just the roof and the narrow slit through which military spotters would peer out around the clock were exposed.

Like the rest of Camp Hero, the pillbox was never really put to its intended use. By the time the fort was commissioned, the tide of the war had shifted against the Axis. German U-boats roamed the waters off Long Island, and delivered one ill-fated saboteurs’ mission, but no invasion was ever to come.

The pillbox became another of the relics that drew sightseers, who could climb into its spotters nest, or lounge on its roof.

The pillbox was built to withstand a Nazi bombardment, but there was no protection from the bombardment of Mother Nature. When it was built, it was more than 100 feet from the edge of the bluff of Turtle Hill, the promontory the lighthouse stands atop. The distance steadily shrank, year after year, as waves battered the foot of the bluff incessantly.

By the mid 1970s, the foundation and the bulk of the pillbox structure that had been buried below ground were exposed jutting out of the now sheer cliff.

“It got to the point that it became dangerous — it could fall at any time and posed a danger to anyone who was on the beach below,” lighthouse historian Henry Osmers said. “The Coast Guard decided they couldn’t leave it like that.”

In 1976, the U.S. Coast Guard, which had owned the lighthouse property since the 1930s, decided it was better to let the pillbox fall from its perch under controlled circumstances. They used firehoses to blast away the soil beneath the pillbox’s foundation until it toppled free.

“It tumbled down and landed upside down,” Osmers said. “And that’s where they left it. For more than 40 years, it’s sat there.”

“[The] 1942 concrete lasts a long time, but coastal erosion can’t be stopped,” Donohue added.

The pillbox will not be able to be put back where it was before, exactly, since that portion of the headlands has washed into the sea. A model in the lighthouse museum shows the orientation of Turtle Hill when the pillbox was in place, with only its roof exposed.

Osmers said that it will be a great addition to the lighthouse property to put the pillbox back in a position that recreates its original role.

“It will be in the meadow, but if we can get it back together, it will be a good addition,” the longtime lighthouse historian said. “People will be able to go inside and get that perspective of what it was like looking through those narrow windows, out at the ocean, watching for an invasion.”