William Gillette - Gillette Castle

Gillette Castle

While most of Gillette's work has long been forgotten, his last great masterpiece is still well known today: his castellated "retirement home". The Washington Post called it "the acme of his dreams." He once called it his "Hadlyme stone heap." Others called it "the rock pile" or "Gillette's folly". Today, it is simply called Gillette Castle. He never referred to it as a castle, although his neighbors often did, but it "summarizes the success upon which all his dreams were built," dreams that "turned his picturesque estate into a small boy’s dream of paradise."

In 1913, while sailing up the Connecticut River in his houseboat, Gillette spotted a hill, part of the Seven Sisters chain, over a ferry's pier in Hadlyme. He docked, disembarked, and climbed up. He purchased 115 acres (0.47 km2) of land the next month. He decided to build up a castle at this location, supposedly inspired by or modeled loosely after the Château de Moulineaux, a French feudal castle built during the era of the Dukes of Normandy and associated in folklore with Robert Le Diable (Robert the Devil). The design of the castle and its grounds features numerous innovative designs, and the entire castle was designed, to the smallest details, by Gillette.

During the five years of construction, he lived aboard his houseboat, the Aunt Polly, named after a mountain woman in South Carolina who tended to him when he was sick, or at a home he had purchased in Greenport, Long Island. The material for the castle was carried up by an aerial-tramway designed by him. The castle's walls tapered from 5 feet (1.5 m) thick at the base to 3 feet (0.91 m) at the upper levels. The castle possessed 24 rooms and 47 doors, with hand-carved puzzle locks, which were also devised by Gillette. The main salon measured 30 by 50 feet (15 m) and was 19 feet (5.8 m) high, featuring a complex mirrored system of surveillance of the castle's public rooms from his bedroom. He explained this as a means "to make great entrances in the opportune moment."

The mansion was finished in 1919, at a cost of USD $1.1 million. Gillette called it "Seven Sisters." Its small train was his personal pride. The train's layout was 3 miles (4.8 km) long, and it traveled all around the property, crossing several bridges and going through one tunnel designed by Gillette.

After Gillette, who had no children, died, his will stated

I would consider it more than unfortunate for me – should I find myself doomed, after death, to a continued consciousness of the behavior of mankind on this planet – to discover that the stone walls and towers and fireplaces of my home – founded at every point on the solid rock of Connecticut; – that my railway line with its bridges, trestles, tunnels through solid rock, and stone culverts and underpasses, all built in every particular for permanence (so far as there is such a thing); – that my locomotives and cars, constructed on the safest and most efficient mechanical principles; – that these, and many other things of a like nature, should reveal themselves to me as in the possession of some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he is or with what surrounded.

Unfortunately, despite Gillette's concern that it not be in the possession of some blithering saphead, the train was relocated to an amusement park, Lake Compounce in Bristol, Connecticut, from 1943 through the mid-90s. Since then, it has since been returned to the Castle.

In 1943, the Connecticut state government bought the property, renaming it Gillette's Castle and Gillette Castle State Park. Located in 67 River Road, East Haddam, Connecticut, it was reopened in 2002. After a four years of restoration, costing $11 million, it now includes a museum, park, and many theatrical celebrations. It receives 100,000 annual visitors. The castle is No. 86002103 on the National Register of Historic Places. It remains a distinctive feature of the view from the Connecticut River, and is one of the top three tourist attractions in the state.