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NEW ENGLAND CASTLES |
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New England hardly seems the place for old castles. Yet they do
exist there -- in a weird, American way. Weird because those of
us who spent our childhood in Europe know a castle when we see one.
Castles are usually dank, gloomy, forbidding places. They don't
have stone-hewn walls that resound to music, or inner courtyards
ablaze with hibiscus. And they certainly don't have swimming pools. |
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 By European standards, therefore, Hammond Castle is no castle, and if a medieval madcap architect had tried to sell it as such to, say, Henry VIII, that flamboyant monarch no doubt would have shouted, "Off with his head." But Hammond Castle in Gloucester, Mass., wasn't built with historical pretensions. After all, its Norman exterior is 12th century, its great hall 13th century and its living quarters 15th century. Hammond Castle never claimed its roots in any specific period; it was simply a collection of early man's work, romantically assembled by a wealthy 20th century inventor, John Hays Hammond Jr. He created this collection for his own satisfaction and for the pleasure he knew it would give future generations. |
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But building a castle was not a lifelong task for Hammond. In contrast to Hearst, who took years to create San Simeon and was consumed in its details, Hammond constructed his Abby-by-the-Sea in three short years, during which time he continued his professional work inventing more than 600 devices, from FM radio to bottle openers. And in contrast to some who built their opulent mansions at Newport, R.I., only to die the next year, Hammond lived in his castle. It served as his home from 1929 when the great plan was completed until his death in 1965. He willed the castle to a non-profit trust. |
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He loved his castle. To fill it, he swept
through a Europe beggared by World War I at a time when a dollar was
a dollar. He bought whatever captured his fancy: German credenzas,
Italian bronzes, Gothic wood carvings, Roman tombstones, Spanish paintings,
Renaissance cupboards, Russian icons, Flemish tapestries, English
antique furniture and medieval manuscript cases and French house facades. |
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The house facades, 15th century shop fronts, form the
border of the centerpiece of the castle, the inner courtyard. Here,
lush greenery watered by artificial rainstorms grows around a Roman
bath which served in Hammond's time as a heated swimming pool. |
| Hammond treated the water with a special
dye to conceal the depth to simulate the appearance of a Roman impluvium,
a shallow depression used to collect rain water. He would then dive,
to the consternation and amusement of his guests, from a bridge beside
the upstairs bedrooms into the apparently shallow water. |
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He teased guests in other ways. One bedroom,
the Purple Room, continues its patterned wallpaper across the door,
concealing, at first glance, the exit from sleepy eyes. But who could
sleep late with the great orchestral organ in the baronial hall below
shaking the building with the sound of its 8,200 pipes? Here was the
largest pipe organ ever installed in a private residence. It was Hammond's
play thing; he continued to improve and modify his organ for 40 years. |
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Yet those trappings were not important to
him. They merely permitted him to create the authentic atmosphere
in this castle, a building by which he hoped to be remembered. A dreamer
holding more patents than any American inventor except Edison, he
was also a pragmatist who knew how fleeting was fame. In a letter
to his father in 1924, he wrote, "In a few years after I am gone,
all my scientific creations will be old fashioned and forgotten....
Where will our name be in a hundred years? Yes, the Roman fever has
gotten in my blood, Hadrian and Cauis Sestus have whispered in my
ear. I want to build something in hard stone and engrave on it for
posterity a name of which I am justly proud." |
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