Well I built this little hunting cabin complete with a boat house up in Alex bay. It's just for a month in the summer.
The house
The boat house
Not sure who here knows the real story about this house/castle but it is amazing. The house was being built in the very early 1900's as a surprise for the wife of the owner of the Waldorf Astoria. There were hundreds of workers hired to complete the job. The guys wife suddenly and unexpectedly died. The construction was stopped and the husband never set foot on the island again. It is the Boldt Castle in Alexandria bay New York if anyone want to check it out.
Here is an official rendering
A "Gilded Age" estate built for a tragic love
An aura of romance seems to surround the five-acre Boldt Castle estate in the Thousand Islands, just offshore from Alexandria Bay, New York. Stone by stone, Boldt Castle was built for love, but it was a love that ended tragically.
Boldt Castle is not a real castle, of course, but a fairy tale version of one. It's a jigsaw puzzle of medieval and Victorian styles pieced together by the firm of W.D. Hewitt and G.W. Hewitt - the same architects who designed the fanciful Druim Moir castle in Philadelphia.
Like many homes from America's Gilded Age, the eleven-building complex is exuberant and outrageous, as though its creators had taken five hundred years of architectural history and spilled it across the craggy island.
Legend has it that multi-millionaire George Boldt ordered the castle built as a testimonial of his love for his wife, Louise. She was only fifteen when they married, and she had worked at his side during his climb to wealth and prominence. Boldt planned to present the castle to Louise on Valentine's Day, 1905.
Of all the grand summer homes in the Thousand Islands, Boldt Castle was to be the most magnificent. More than 300 artisans, masons, stonecutters, landscapers, and other craftsmen were hired. The Alster Tower would be a gigantic playhouse with a bolling alley, a billiard room, a library, bedrooms, and kitchen areas.
The Power House would hold a steam-powered generator for power and lights. The Yacht House would shelter the family houseboat and boats from visitors. But the crowning jewel would be a 120-room home modeled after a Rhineland castle and furnished with paintings, sculptures, mosaics, and tapestries from around the world.
This grand design was never completed, however. Construction halted when a sudden tragedy struck the young family.
One year before Boldt castle was to be completed, Louise, aged 41, died. George Boldt stopped the construction and never returned to the island. Vandals broke windows, covered walls with graffiti, and stripped buildings of ornamental details. Roofs leaked, timbers deteriorated, plaster peeled from walls. A fire destroyed all but the stone shell of the Powerhouse.
For the next seventy years, the castle sat abandoned. Stones were strewn across the lawn and pigeons cooed plaintively from rotting rafters.
There is, however, a happy ending. In 1977 the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority acquired the estate and began restorations. Windows and roofs were repaired. The Power House was rebuilt and the ballroom was converted into a museum. Couples came to be wed.
Every summer you will see the wedding couples sail down the Saint Lawrence River, glide beneath an arched water gate modeled after Roman monuments, and say their vows on a stone bridge leading to a fanciful assembly of peaked turrets.
Perhaps the couples are drawn by the romantic story surrounding the castle. Or, perhaps, they sense that the mismatched towers and quirky ornaments say something important about love.
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I am not so sure about the feb 14th gift of the house. I can't imagine the guy going through all the trouble to build something so beautiful and then give it away when it looks like this.....
http://good-times.webshots.com/photo/1410754674061847443fTBeUS