Illuminating Shelter Island Heights
Residents of Shelter Island Heights celebrated the Fifth Annual Illumination Night on Friday, July 10, by hanging lanterns and tea lights on their doors, porches, balconies and fences, and joining the parade that strolled through the warm summer night admiring the glow.
The event began as an homage to the Grand Illumination, an event that was created in Oak Bluffs on Martha’s Vineyard in 1869.
Shelter Island Heights (1872), like Oak Bluffs (1834) and Ocean Grove, NJ (1869) was created as a Methodist Camp to provide summer recreation and spiritual instruction outside of a city setting for middle class families.
Over the years, all three summer communities developed a distinctive style of whimsical gingerbread cottages, small parks, porches and sidewalks. For Oak Bluffs and Shelter Island, decorating those cottages with lights one night a year is a beautiful tradition that evokes history and nostalgia.
This year’s celebration, which was entirely organized and executed by residents of the Heights, started with a bike and scooter parade from the Chequit Hotel, to Union Chapel on the Green, for songs and poetry readings such as, “This land Is Your land,” “America the Beautiful,” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”
Heights residents, Julian Maggio, waving a vintage American flag led the way as the parade of participants fanned out over the 130 or so homes in the Heights to enjoy the lights.
More photos below by Charity Robey of a beautiful Shelter Island summer evening.
