Bannerman Island

Today we visited Bannerman Island which is located across the Hudson River in Newburgh. I enjoyed the boat ride as I always do. The wall of the castle shown in the picture above is the first view that I had once I disembarked. This part of the castle and the rest of the island have an amazing history that I never heard of.

Originally Bannerman Island was called Pollepel Island. Its name was later changed by Frank Bannerman who bought the island exclusively for his arsenal business.  Frank Bannerman was born in 1851 in Scotland. He later came to America with his father who sold goods at navy auction. Bannerman followed the same kind of business as his father. He sold war supplies to the government. As a result, he became a very prosperous man. His business was founded in 1865 in Brooklyn as “Bannerman’s.”  During the Spanish war, he decided to buy Pollepel Island where he stored all his business goods. Once he bought the island, he started constructing the buildings that today are history. He was not an architect. However, he drew how he wanted the buildings to look like. Consequently, the buildings that we saw today, were not only the temporary home and business place of Bannerman, but they were also part of his imagination. Their new home was finalized in 1901, year they moved in.

Before and After of  Bannerman's Castle

After all the triumph that Bannerman reached, he died of a gallbladder disease which by that time was hard to treat. Sadly two years before he died, the building where the ammunition was exploded due to unknown reasons. The explosion was so strong that it felt across the river. In addition, it broke the upper windows of the castle. Due to that the family felt discontent for the loss of Bannerman, they neglected the island and thus it became deteriorated. Since no one replaced the broken windows, this became the first cause of the deterioration of the castle. Later after everybody had moved out of the island, the castle got fire which lasted for three days. This big fire caused the floors to come down and weakened the structure of the building even more. The bad weather also contributed to the deterioration of the wonderful castle constructed by Frank Bannerman. NYS Environmental Protection Fund which, now owns this historical island, is definitely making a good effort maintaining the remains of a building that is older than a century. The left picture above shows the castle years ago before being exposure to many catastrophic events. While catastrophic events started to occur such as the explosion, the big fire, the bad weather and others, the castle started to deteriorate to become what it is today, shown in the right picture above. If it was not for the big metal poles supporting the wall of the castle, the castle would have been knock down by the bad winter that we just had. 

View of the Hudson from Bannerman Island