Francis Bannerman Views
The structure is named for Francis Bannerman VI, who bought the rocky, 6 1/2-acre island in 1900 as a place to warehouse items sold in his war relic store in Manhattan, some 50 miles south. Bannerman was an amateur architect with a touch of P.T. Barnum. He modeled his warehouse after castles in his native Scotland, giving it a siege-ready look with a moat and turrets.
The principal feature on the island is Bannerman's Castle, an abandoned military surplus warehouse.[2] It was built in the style of a castle by gilded age businessman Francis Bannerman VI (1851–1918).[3] Pollepel Island is sometimes referred to as Bannerman's Island.[5] One side of the castle carries the words Bannerman's Island Arsenal .[2]
Francis Bannerman was born 24 March 1851 in Dundee, Scotland, and immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1854. The family moved to Brooklyn in 1858 and began a military surplus business near the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1865 purchasing surplus military equipment at the close of the American Civil War. In 1867 the business occupied a ship chandlery on Atlantic Avenue engaged in the purchase of worn rope for papermaking. The store on the 500-block of Broadway opened in 1897 to outfit volunteers for the Spanish-American War.[8] The business bought weapons directly from the Spanish government before it evacuated Cuba; and then purchased over 90 percent of the Spanish guns, ammunition, and equipment captured by the United States military and auctioned off by the United States government.[9] Bannerman's illustrated mail order catalog expanded to 300 pages; and became a reference for collectors of antique military equipment.[8]
Francis Bannerman purchased the island in November 1900,[8] for use as a storage facility for his growing surplus business.[10] Because his storeroom in New York City was not large enough to provide a safe location to store thirty million surplus munitions cartridges,[8] in the spring of 1901 he began to build an arsenal on Pollepel. Bannerman designed the buildings himself and let the constructors interpret the designs on their own.[11] Most of the building were 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, often using items from his surplus collection for decorative touches. The castle, clearly visible from the shore of the river, served as a giant advertisement for his business. On the side of the castle facing the eastern bank of the Hudson, Bannerman cast the legend Bannerman's Island Arsenal into the wall.
Francis Bannerman Images
