The epic and mysterious Bannerman Castle on Pollopel Island in the middle of the Hudson River gears up for its 2022 season of cultural programming with chefs dinners, concerts, movie screenings, live theater, and of historical tours.
Illustrative: Jewish families flee Arab rioting in Jerusalem s Old City in August 1929. (Public domain)
Palestinian Arabs gather at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, in an anti-Zionist demonstration on March 8, 1920, prior to the Nabi Musa holiday on which violent rioting took place. (Public domain)
Illustrative: Then-British Home Secretary Winston Churchill on a visit to the British Mandate of Palestine in March 1921, nearly three decades before it became the Jewish state. (Churchill Museum)
Then-British Home Secretary Winston Churchill with Sir Herbert Samuel during a visit to Jerusalem in March 1921. (Public domain)
Jewish refugees, arriving in Haifa, Palestine on April 14, 1920, aboard the Theodore Herzl support on their shoulders the bodies, in white shrouds, two of their compatriots, whom refugees charge where slain when the Theodore Herzl was boarded by British personnel after unsuccessfully attempting to run the British blockade. (AP Photo/Tom Fitzsimmons)
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Owned by New York state and maintained by the Bannerman Castle Trust, Bannerman’s Island is quite a sight for anyone riding the train past Beacon. There, on a 6.5-acre rocky island, stand the ruins of a Scottish castle in the Hudson Highlands.
Stepping off onto Bannerman’s Island, just yards from the dock, are towering castle walls.
“So all of this Scottish design – thistles and brick, mortar, stucco to look like a Scottish castle even though built in the early 1900s – has a look from Middle Ages. And he loved that being of Scottish descent and very proud.”
That’s Sheldon Stowe, a member of the Bannerman Castle Trust. The “he” Stowe is referring to is Francis Bannerman. Bannerman was in the family business of buying and selling scrap and surplus military equipment. Pollepel Island its actual name was also of historical military significance in the Revolutionary War.