Bannerman's Castle: the arsenal on the Hudson

Of all the castles in this archive, Bannerman's is the most American. It was not built by a duke or a dynasty. It was built by a scrap dealer who understood that if you put a castle on an island in the Hudson River, every passenger on every train will look at it — and some of them will buy something.

The man who bought an island

Francis Bannerman VI was born in Scotland in 1851 and arrived in the United States as a child. By the end of the Civil War he was in the military surplus business in Brooklyn, buying up the equipment that armies no longer needed and selling it on. It was a strange, profitable trade, and it made him rich enough to need somewhere to store it all.

In 1900 he bought Pollepel Island, a six-and-a-half-acre rock in the Hudson River about fifty miles north of New York City. The island already had a name — 'pollepel' is Dutch for a ladle — and a history: during the Revolutionary War, chains and obstacles had been strung across the river nearby to stop British ships. Bannerman added a castle.

A castle as an advertisement

He designed the buildings himself and began work in the spring of 1901. The main structure was a mock castle, its walls carrying the words 'Bannerman's Island Arsenal' cast into the stone. It was a warehouse, an office and a billboard all at once, and it worked: the arsenal became a landmark of the Hudson.

Bannerman died in 1918, and construction stopped with him. Two years later, in August 1920, an explosion tore through part of the complex — hundreds of pounds of shells and powder stored on the island. The damage was serious, and the island's fortunes never fully recovered.

Fire, and a slow collapse

The family's ferryboat sank in 1950 and the island fell quiet. In 1967 the island was bought by a preservation trust and gifted to New York State, and guided tours began the following year. Then, on 8 August 1969, a fire destroyed the roofs and floors of the castle, and the island was closed to the public.

Pollepel Island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and since 2004 a non-profit, the Bannerman Castle Trust, has run guided tours and worked to stabilise what remains. A partial wall collapse in December 2009 took away much of the front and half of the east wall. The castle is still standing — just — and still worth the trip up the river.

Frequently asked questions

Related places

If this one stayed with you, these entries sit in the same corner of the archive:

• Boldt Castle: the monument to a love that ended — United States
• Lynnewood Hall: the Gilded Age mansion that outlived its world — United States
• Château de Noisy: the castle that became a legend — Belgium