When approaching Pollepel Island, with a view of the Bannerman Castle, you're taken to worlds and life-times away...to a fairy-tale land of stories untold.
Little to my dismay, the truth unfolds that this was in fact a military surplus warehouse built by businessman and architecturally obsessed Francis Bannerman VI in 1901. Being an avid man of the import/export business, Bannerman was the first to offer mail-ordered catalogs for guns and ammunition for the military, and this structure was a means to store the excess which overflowed from his New York warehouse. Since the island has uneven footing and rocky cliffs, the warehouse had a whole floor dedicated for recreational activities. He even built a house for his family, several yards from the warehouse.
Working from a young age, Bannerman, living in Brooklyn, would collect scraps of metal from the Navy Harbor, and would continue to have a "cut-the-cost" or perhaps a "reduce-reuse-recycle" mentality that contributed to his great business skills. This eventually caught up with him, and literally backfired when a small fire broke loose in the warehouse. In normal circumstances, this would be easy to attain, however, Bannerman, decided to reuse the flooring when building the structure, without realizing this was previously wood was soaked in oil. This in turn, only heightened all destruction, in which the fire burned for 3 days.
What is left of the warehouse, which I will still refer to as a castle, still holds its magnificence and beauty. Bannerman, having a knack for details and architecture, built a landmark that takes us through time, and his story will be forever told.
