On a landlocked street corner at the entrance to the South Street Seaport stands a shabby, rust-streaked old lighthouse, its lantern dark, dwarfed by modern towers to its south and west. Passed with scarcely a glance by most people heading to the shops and bars on Fulton Street, this is the 109-year-old Titanic Memorial Lighthouse, which once presided over the East River waterfront from a far prouder height, shining its fixed green beacon miles out to Sandy Hook, at the southern entrance of Lower New York Bay.

A fledgling preservation group, which includes descendants of Titanic passengers, has been urging the restoration of the lighthouse for more than two and a half years, while the South Street Seaport Museum, which owns the structure, has been focused on the more immediate, existential struggle of simply staying solvent.