Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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NORTHSHOREMAG.COM 76 NOVEMBER 2020 Some people wish upon a star. Martin Nally wished upon a lighthouse. From his modest home in Manchester-by-the-Sea, where he and his wife were raising two young boys, the 30-something mason would gaze at Bakers Island Light in the waters leading to Martin Nally has made a career out of restoring America's castles. BY LARRY LINDNER THE LIGHTHOUSE WHISPERER PHOTOGRAPHS BY ESSEX HERITAGE, BY HANNAH DAIGLE (OPPOSITE PAGE) The restored Baker's Island Light was originally established in 1791 . I N - D E P T H Salem Harbor and wonder whether his ship would ever come in. Then, in 1996, shortly before his 40th birthday, came the first of a 20-year spate of invitations to bid on the restoration of lighthouses up and down New England. The iconic structures had largely outlived their preeminence as way-finding stations, but their architectural and cultural significance landed them on the National Register of Historic Places. Their owner, the United States Coast Guard, wanted to fix them up, and in many cases, offer them to nonprofits that could continue to preserve them. Nally drew up a detailed proposal, and the company where he worked at the time won the first bid, which, serendipitously, was to restore Bakers Island Light. "This lighthouse was really near collapse," says the Coast Guard's architect on the project, Marsha Levy. "All of the lighthouses are in very exposed places with the worst of what coastal construction has to resist," she