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September 15, 2012

Adventures On Pollepel Island & Orange County, NY...

Remember that list of things to do in New York that I posted a couple of months back? Well today I did one of the things on that list, I went up to Orange County with Justin, Phil and another one of our friends to go on a tour of Pollepel Island and the Bannerman Castle.
Here is some history on the island via Wikipedia...
 
Pollepel Island is an island in the Hudson River that is about 50 miles north of New York City. The principal feature on the island is Bannerman's Castle, an abandoned military surplus warehouse. It was built in 1901 in the style of a castle by Gilded Age businessman Francis Bannerman VI for use as a storage facility for his growing surplus business. Most of the building was devoted to the stores of army surplus but Bannerman built another castle in a smaller scale on top of the island near the main structure as a residence.

Today, the castle is property of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and is mostly in ruins. While the exterior walls still stand, all the internal floors and non-structural walls have since burned down. The island has been the victim of vandalism, trespass, neglect and decay.

On-island guided tours are available through the Bannerman's Castle Trust ← This is what we did.




It was a beautiful day out and the island was really neat but we couldn't get close to the building and we had to stick with our group, which isn't the way we roll. So we all agreed that it was an amazing place but the tour wasn't thrilling and we were very underwhelmed.

After we were done with the tour the boys let me hop out of the car to wander around this old looking cemetery that we had passed on the way to the docks (They didn't get out of the car because it wasn't in the best neighborhood and they weren't into like I was). Since I couldn't stop and really look at the headstones I just took a bunch of pictures before jumping back into the car.
Once I was back in the car we drove over to Beacon and we went from shop to shop seeing what they had there, then we went to have lunch at this little Mexican restaurant called Tito Santana Taqueria. While we were in the restaurant Phil noticed a person he went to law school with who happened to be hanging out in Beacon, NY with his wife (It's it just a small world?), so he talk to him for a bit and then we walked around town a bit longer and decided it was time to drive back to Long Island.
It was a really nice day.  I'm glad we had a chance to drive up and spend the day chilling someone new.

1 comment :

  1. That property is out of control, too bad you couldn't get closer to certain buildings. Oh and I'm glad I'm having dinner while eating this or those pictures of that great food would be torture!

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