Pollepel Island
— — a Scottish castle the river kept.
Not only on a wall.
“A small rocky island in the Hudson, about fifty miles north of New York City, where Francis Bannerman built a Scottish-style castle for his military surplus business in 1900. The state took the island in 1967; a fire two years later took the roof. The walls have been weathering above the river ever since, and the boat from Beacon goes when the season allows.
Pollepel Island, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Pollepel Island sits in the Hudson River about a thousand feet off the eastern shore, between the towns of Beacon and Cold Spring, roughly 80 kilometres north of New York City. The six-acre island is the centrepiece of the northern section of Hudson Highlands State Park. The Dutch name pollepel translates roughly as ladle. The Hudson Highlands surround it: Storm King to the south, and Breakneck Ridge directly opposite on the east bank. The river narrows here, and the wind funnels through the gap.
The Scottish-style castle was begun in 1900 by Francis Bannerman VI, a New York military surplus dealer who needed somewhere outside the city to store powder and ordnance. Construction continued in stages until his death in 1918, with the family using the upper end of the island as a residence. A 1920 powder explosion damaged a portion of the works; a 1969 fire gutted the residence and the arsenal. New York State acquired the island in 1967, and the Bannerman Castle Trust now stabilises the surviving walls.
The island opens to guided tours from May through October, reached by boat from the Beacon waterfront on the east bank of the Hudson. The Bannerman Castle Trust runs the tours in partnership with the state park; a kayak landing is permitted by reservation. Metro-North's Hudson Line runs along the east bank from Grand Central Terminal, with the closest station at Beacon. The walls are stabilised but unrestored; visitors keep to marked paths inside the courtyard ruins and around the residence terrace.