Haunted Bannerman Castle (Part 1)

About 50 miles away from Manhattan, the ruins of a castle lie on a small island in the Hudson River. Travelers pass the ruins on the train, and the only clue to the history of the destroyed castle are the words “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal,” emblazoned on the side of the structure. The island, and the area, has a long history of hauntings, from its pre-colonial times, to the superstitions of Dutch sailors and stories of a legendary goblin king.

I did an episode of the podcast about this Bannerman Castle back in 2021, after visiting it, but those episode show notes are a mess, so I wanted to turn ’em into a few more readable blog posts.

I first learned about the mysterious ruins of Bannerman Castle a couple years ago. While on the train up to Albany for a friend’s engagement party, I looked out the window just in time for me to glimpse an island with an honest-to-goodness castle. I just knew it had to have a wild story, so a couple months later, while on a trip to Beacon, New York, I paid it a visit.

I’ll share what it’s like to visit the island, as well as the urban legends that cling to the place. But for now, I wanted to leave you with a bit of scene-setting from a 1999 New York Times article published when the long-abandoned island was preparing to reopen:

Ever since it was abandoned in the 1950’s, this island, one of the Hudson River’s most incongruous and inaccessible ruins, has fascinated history buffs. Once the private warehouse of Frank Bannerman VI, an eccentric Scottish immigrant in the military supplies business, the castle has deteriorated so badly that the island has been declared hazardous and off limits by its current owner, New York State.

. . ._Mr. Bannerman designed seven buildings for the island — three warehouses, two workers’ houses, a family residence and the signature six-story tower — in homage to his Scottish roots, complete with turrets, crenelated towers, a drawbridge and a moat._

. . . On a recent tour of the island, Jim Logan and Thom Johnson, two members of the Bannerman Castle Trust, noted how Mr. Bannerman had used recycled bedsprings, bamboo spears and bayonets as building materials. The tower, they explained, was actually designed to create an optical illusion, with top floors wider than the lower ones to make the building look imposing. And none of the buildings contained right angles.

Unfortunately, vandals have sullied the place in recent years, security cameras and No Trespassing signs notwithstanding. There is fresh graffiti, done in tribute to Limp Bizkit, Kid Rock and teenage romance. Nature has asserted itself, too, as evidenced by the spread of poison ivy and sumac.

(That article makes me laugh every time I read it. The idea that people would take the time to emblazon stately ruins with Limp Bizkit lyrics is just . . . quite funny.)

Anyway, I’ll return to this topic next week!

This post doesn’t link to sources as comprehensively as usual, because it’s based on an old episode of Buried Secrets Podcast. I wrote this based on the original episode notes, which I penned when I was worse at adding specific in-line citations. But all of the sources I used are linked at the bottom of the episode shownotes page.

The arms dealer and his castle (Haunted Bannerman Castle Part 2)

Last time, I posted a quick intro about the ruins of an odd, old castle in Upstate New York. Well, an eccentric castle needs an eccentric creator, so let’s look at the arms dealer who built that thing back around the turn of the twentieth century.

The castle was built by a man named Francis Bannerman VI. Bannerman was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1851, and immigrated to the United States from in 1854. His family moved to Brooklyn in 1858.

The arms business

In everything I’ve read about Bannerman, he’s been described as a shrewd businessman who sold “military surplus” goods, but as far as I can tell from his story, it appears that he could just as accurately be called an arms dealer. (I wouldn’t say he was only an arms dealer, but certainly seems like he dealt plenty of arms.) So let’s take a quick look at the history of the business.

As the story goes, Bannerman started small, collecting scrap metal from the New York harbor and then selling those. In 1865, he bought military equipment left over from the Civil War (which had just ended) and started his military supply business near the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Let’s be clear: Bannerman’s wasn’t your typical army/navy store. He didn’t just sell military uniforms, bags, and the like. He sold actual military-grade weapons, and at times he sold them directly to the US government.

In 1897, he set up a store to sell equipment to volunteers for the Spanish-American War. He purchased weapons from the Spanish government prior to their evacuation of Cuba, and after the war, he bought ninety percent of the weapons that the US military had confiscated during the war.

Later on, around 1900-1910, Bannerman purchased guns from the Navy at what were probably scrap prices. When the United States entered World War I, he sold those guns to the Army. (For what I can only assume was a tidy profit.) I’ve also heard claims that he made some charitable donations during World War I.

A source note: The story of him selling the munitions back to the government before World War I came from Wikipedia (and I haven’t been able to verify the claim’s original source), and a narrative of him donating blankets, cannons, and uniforms comes from the Bannerman Castle website (no citation given), which caters to people who want to visit the island and describes the arms dealer as considering himself a “man of peace.” But I haven’t dug into either set of claims further. I suppose it would have been possible for him to both re-sell weapons to the government for a profit during wartime and also donate some blankets. But the divergence in descriptions of his interactions with the wartime machine of World War I felt worth mentioning.

And, to be fair, while his business included arms dealing for active conflicts, he also apparently sold collectible military surplus items. Bannerman worked with non-military customers like early film studios and Buffalo Bill. Also, apparently half of the commemorative cannons in public places in the U.S. came from Bannerman’s, so he had a brisk trade there, as well.

This post doesn’t link to sources as comprehensively as usual, because it’s based onan old episode of Buried Secrets Podcast. I wrote this based on the original episode notes, which I penned when I was worse at adding specific in-line citations. But all of the sources I used are linked at the bottom of the episode shownotes page.

Haunted Bannerman Castle Part 3

What do you do when your military surplus business has vast quantities of explosives and arms? If your name is Francis Bannerman VI, you build a castle to put them in.

The storage problem

A couple decades before Francis Bannerman VI’s death, in the midst of his success, Bannerman’s (as his business was called) set up shop in multiple locations. By around 1900, the store had ended up at 501 Broadway (in what today is a bustling part of Soho, and what would have also been a very populous area back then.)

His building was seven stories tall, with the first few floors serving as retail space. The top floor housed a museum. According to Roadtrippers, “He was fond of saying that ‘Bannerman’s could outfit an army in a week—10,000 rifles, 10,000 saddles no problem,’’ and had the inventory to prove it.”

However, after Bannerman purchased 30 million rounds of live ammunition after the Spanish-American War, New York City ordered him to store his stockpile outside city limits. Storing munitions could be risky (that’s foreshadowing), particularly in the middle of lower Manhattan. So he needed a new place for his wares.

So why not buy a private island and build a castle to store it all?

Pollepel Island (Haunted Bannerman Castle Part 4)

Located in the Hudson River near the town of Fishkill, Pollepel Island is a 6.5 acre, uninhabited, rocky island. It sits near the eastern bank of the Hudson, about 1,000 feet away.

The little island’s post-colonization history includes being remarked upon by Dutch colonizers and playing a small role in the Revolutionary War. Located near West Point, the island sat next toa set of 106 cheval de frise, underwater barriers consisting of iron-tipped logs constructed using prison labor. The obstruction wasn’t particularly successful–no English boats were sunk–but some of its cassions still sit at the bottom of the river. At one point during the war, George Washington suggested using Pollepel Island as a military prison, but it doesn’t seem that ever happened.

The castle

In 1901, David Bannerman, the son of arms dealer Francis Bannerman VI, spotted (the supposedly haunted) Pollepel Island while on a canoeing trip and recommended it as a place for the family business to store their piles of weapons. Bannerman purchased the island for $1,600 (about $58,000 today–seems like a steal for a private island) from a member of the Taft family and began to set up an unusual warehouse. An added bonus? Rumors of hauntings had long swirled around the island.

For all my not-quite-concealed scorn for the business of selling arms, I think that the parts of the story related to the castle’s construction is genuinely cool and interesting. So I’ll get into that next time.

Castle Billboard (Haunted Bannerman Castle Part 5)

Building the castle

In true eccentric-rich-guy-style, Bannerman ordered that his private-island munitions warehouse resemble a Scottish castle. He drew up the ornate designs himself. Most of the construction happened without the help of professionals like engineers, architects, and contractors. And of course because he had an enormous weapons stockpile, he had plenty of powder to blow up bits of the island in order to level it for building.

Castle Billboard

Since the building was visible to both train passengers and tourist boats, he ensured that the side of the structure was emblazoned with the words “Bannerman’s Island Arsenal,” written in four-foot-high-letters. The castle served as a particularly classy billboard. Upstate New York was a popular tourist destination, so there were many, many passengers heading upstate or sailing along the Hudson. So as eccentric as the castle’s vibe is, it was a smart marketing tactic.

And hey, it still works today–I first learned about the castle’s existence by looking out of the train window, after all.

A regal warehouse

A weird, folk-art adjacent castle is like catnip to me. This isn’t the only American castle (built by some random guy) that I’ve toured. Like I mentioned, Bannerman’s castle was built primarily by day-laborers, without the guidance of the typical experts you might usually bring in. I’m not sure whether this was a cost-saving tactic or something he did to preserve his vision for the place.

If I recall correctly from the tour (it was a couple years ago), the castle is constructed from cement and brick. According to the New York Times, they also “used recycled bedsprings, bamboo spears and bayonets as building materials.”[^1] I seem to recall that it also incorporated some real cannon balls, as well. Originally, the castle was complete with a drawbridge, a moat of thistles, and a portcullis.

Unfortunately, the castle itself hasn’t exactly stood the test of time, falling prey to its own store of weapons, as well as fires and vandals over the years. But in addition to the castle, Bannerman built a residence on the island, which still stands today. (It’s not in pieces, since it wasn’t packed full of explosives. Visitors are allowed to go inside the house nowadays, which is pretty cool.) There also used to be a promenade around the island made from sunken barges. (For a sense of what it looked like, check out this picture of the island from the National Archives.)

Bannerman also invented a family crest for himself, since he thought he should have one, if he also had a castle. Sure, why not?

[^1] Chen, David W. “Long Abandoned, an Island in the Hudson is Restored.” New York Times, Late Edition (East Coast) ed., Nov 28 1999, p. 1, 45:3. ProQuest. Web. 13 Sep. 2021 .