Lottery winners still thrilled with lighthouse
ERIE, Pa. (AP) – Pat and Mary Scutella’s home has a great view of Lake Erie, but it was built to be viewed from the water. The Erie natives won a 1994 lottery among seven finalists that put them in one of the state’s few lighthouses on the condition that they act as caretakers.
The site of the Erie Land Lighthouse is about 200 yards away from the country’s first lighthouse on the Great Lakes, built in 1818. That lighthouse was destroyed, as was the second built in 1858.
Pat Scutella, who concedes he knew little about lighthouses in 1994, has since become a source of knowledge about their home, which was built in 1867 on Presque Isle.
The couple, joined in the cottage by their 12-year-old son, Patrick, invite anyone interested in the lighthouse and its story to stop in and ask questions or look around.
“If you’re going to live here and make it your own little castle, you don’t deserve to live here,” Pat Scutella said.
The interior of the lighthouse remains inaccessible to the public for safety reasons. The Scutellas, however, invite people to walk on the property and take as many pictures as they like.
Pat Scutella, an employee of the Millcreek Township Streets Department, has pieced together what written history exists of the lighthouse.
Much of the documented history was lost in 1934 when the city obtained ownership and destroyed many documents.
The lighthouse was deactivated in 1899, according to the National Park Service.
The Scutellas have pored over blueprints of the original caretakers’ cottage and read all of the known literature that does exist. They also discovered old maps that show roads and even a waterfall on the property that no longer exist.
The Scutellas have had past caretakers back to the property in an attempt to fill in some of the historical gaps.
One of their first projects was to restore the caretaker’s cottage, their living quarters.
“The house had been decorated in the ’70s, and it looked like it,” Pat Scutella said. “It was very much a pad more than a cottage.”
The couple said they will remain caretakers at the lighthouse as long as the city allows them to stay. Although some have suggested opening a gift shop, they see their home as a community resource, not a business.
“There are people who come to the lighthouse because it offers them peace and it offers them solace,” Mary Scutella said. “We want to create a park for people who’ve come here and found peace just because it’s a light.”