Sunday, April 19, 2009

Glen Island Castle

It's better to be happy in a cardboard shack,
Then to be alooooone in a castle...

Or so says Harry Connick Jr.

Last Friday, Nicky and me went out to New Rochelle NY to see the legendary Glen Island Castle, now home to the Columbia University rowing team. Built in 1879 by a businessman named John H. Starin, the castle used to have it's own zoo, museum, and beach. Today, all that's left is the castle, crumbling beer garden, cannon, oddball passageways, and strangely mounted rocks.

The song comes to mind because a few hours after visiting the castle, we participated in my school's Sleepout, which is a competition to build the best cardboard shack to raise awareness of homelessness. AND! I'm proud to say that my team won the competition by building the strongest and most efficient shack out of the 6 teams representing my school's fraterneties and sororities.

The castle sits on the west bank of Glen Island in New Rochelle, NY and if you're in the area, is worth the visit.



South side view

Northern side






Western wall of the Beer Garden




Never figured out what these were for.
Not tombstones as far as we could tell.



Sweeeeetie!






Beer Garden, Eastern Wall



DUCK!










Find anything, Indy?



Whatcha lookin for?



This is the cardboard shack that I designed and we built,
In the rain.
It was a lot of fun, we had some good soup and listened
to a few good bands on the front lawn of my school.


-AK

3 comments:

Richard Rizzo said...

Thank you for an update on this place, It was a special memory for me as a kid during the early 60's when it was in better shape, the years really took a toll on it and it changed quite a bit since I last seen it.

And great job on the photography !

Sunshine said...

From a castle to a cardboard shack in a day + you = priceless.

Anonymous said...

The Castle is actually the boathouse of Iona College & Sarah Lawrence College-- not Columbia. Columbia rows on the Harlem River.