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NEW ENGLAND CASTLES |
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Thomas Gustave Plant, like Hammond, was an inventor. Unlike Hammond, who inherited wealth, Plant came from a poor family and had to leave school at the age of 13 to support himself. The shoe factories of Boston offered the only employment for a boy who showed no interest in the alternative, the shipbuilding yards of his native Bath, Maine. Plant's star rose rapidly in the shoe industry. He developed techniques such as messenger boys wearing roller skates to speed up deliveries, and patented devices to increase production. Soon he had enough money to buy one factory, then another. And more. His factories flourished and he finally sold out, at the age of 51, to United Shoe for $21 million. Tiring of his first wife, Dorothy, he became enamored of his private secretary, Olive, who was 26 years younger and 12 inches taller than Plant, who stood only 5 feet 1 inch. He had discussed divorce with Dorothy and when, one day, she came down to breakfast and found a check for $1 million in her napkin ring, she got the message and departed from his life. Plant crossed America and Europe seeking the perfect spot to build a wedding present for his new love. In 1909 he was traveling in Spain with his niece, Amy, when she happened to remark on the beauty of Ossipie Mountain Park in New Hampshire, a place where seven granite mountains rolled down to the borders of Lake Winnipesaukee. Plant cabled his brother. "Buy Ossipie Mountain Park," said his terse message. |
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| Plant was on his way. It took $7 million
to accumulate the 6,000 acres and put up, on the summit of one of
the mountains, a 16-room house he called "Lucknow" after
a famous castle in Scotland. |
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 Plant hired three architects and, disagreeing with each, fired them all. He finally designed the house himself and construction started in 1913. He employed 2,000 workers, half of whom were Italian stone masons, each taking one whole day to cut and lay three pentagonal stones. Each roof tile of Spanish slate cost a dollar, but the granite was native -- he blasted it himself from one of his mountains, and oxen drawing wagons hauled it to the construction site. |
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Thirty miles of trails were cleared through
the forests because both the Plants loved to ride on horseback. His
other love was hunting and, indeed, one of his hunting companions
and occasional guests was Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, unfortunately,
was also one of his business advisers. Plant took the former president's
suggestion and put many of his assets in Russian bonds just before
that market collapsed. Bad investments in Cuban sugar further weakened
his financial position, then the Great Depression finished him off. |
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Gradually, most of his servants left to find paying jobs. An exception was the cook, who not only stayed on and worked for nothing, but lent him $200. Plant died in 1941, penniless at the age of 82. A few friends paid for his funeral. The house, however, remains to show visitors how far ahead of his time this inventive romantic was. |
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Plant's castle had electric light supplied by its own hydroelectric plant, and air conditioning even in the basement room where oil paintings were stored. He designed an intercom system for his 30 servants and installed telephones where persons could call out but not in. He invented an intrusion alarm system. His water supply spilled down from the mountains with 70 pounds of pressure at 500 gallons a minute. Nevertheless, he created for his shower a circular system where the needle jets sprayed from all angles to save him the bother of turning around. |
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| But the house mirrors more than his eccentric
genius. It reflects his pride that just as America was built and grew
with foreign influences, so was his home.
Said Patti Gray, who lived on this estate all her life: "Tom Plant had a feeling for immigrants. He employed them in his factories, and the house is, in a way, his salute to many countries. "Here we have Spanish slate and English lead, Normandy towers and Oriental roofs, Japanese ridge poles and Russian pines. He even used a Swedish interior decorator, and for the golf course imported a Scottish shepherd with a flock of sheep! Castle in the Clouds is thus a tribute to that time when America truly was the great melting pot." |
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