Manufacturer: Shenango China
User: Castle Hotel
Date of plate: 1957
Notes: Originally called Hartlands, the Castle Hotel was built sometime between 1903 and 1908 by George and Elizabeth Beach on Cornfield Point, Connecticut, overlooking Long Island Sound. It was reported to have cost $350,000 "with aspirations to be the equal of the Newport summer cottages." It was designed by renowned New York architect, Alfredo S.G. Taylor, and contained 40 rooms in 15,000 square feet of floor space. It took approximately two years to build and used stones from the rocky beach at Cornfield Point.
The Hartlands mansion had the appearance of several small Tudor cottages joined together in sophisticated integration. When completed, there were German chimes in the clock tower that rang on the hour.
In 1923, Otto and Margaret (Maggie May) Lindbergh, restauranteurs and innkeepers from Red Bank, N.J., bought Hartlands and about 3.5 surrounding acres for $75,000 and turned the house into a hotel that they named, Ye Castle Inn.
Their daughter Jenny married August Campbell Strusholm, a decorated World War I hero and former car dealer from New Jersey. But the Lindbergh's son-in-law's main claim to local fame was his rum-running and bootlegging operation, using Ye Castle Inn as his base.
Throughout the era of Prohibition, the Lindbergh's Ye Castle Inn benefited greatly from their son-in-law's successful bootlegging operations. The inn thrived as an elegant retreat for select and wealthy clientele, renowned for its fine liquor, cigarettes, big-band music and gambling.
The Lindberghs owned and lived in the mansion for 27 years, the longest ownership tenure in the mansion's history, spanning the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, World War 2, and up until 1950, when it was sold to "Red" Kell,y who changed the name from Ye Castle Inn to the Inn at Cornfield Point.
In 1955, the property was sold at a bankruptcy auction to Anthony Pegnataro of the grocery store chain of New Haven. Pegnataro renamed the inn as the Castle Hotel and ran the resort for eight years. Complaining to the town of over-taxation for a tax assessment of $224,820, he sold the property in 1963.
After 1963, there were several more owners and name changes, the last being the Castle Inn. By 2002, over 8,500 square feet of the mansion disappeared and the rubble cleared. Only about an acre of waterfront land remained from the original 600-acre Cornfield Point estate. Wayne Rand and Maria Foss-Rand discovered it in 2007. They purchased the former Castle Inn/Castle Hotel for approximately $2 million. Finally, 100 years later, the mansion was ultimately restored to its original glory as a private home.
White body plate with a green stripe on the rim's outer edge and a black pinstripe underneath. On the inner rim is a green laurel drawing with a bow at the base. At the top of the rim is the logo, consisting of a line drawing in black of the house and clock tower with the words "Castle Hotel" in a black Old English font. There is an odd, floating P centered above Castle Hotel, and considering the plate was made just two years after Pegnataro's purchase, that probably belongs to him.
The weathered photo of the castle, shown above, comes from Laura Gray, administrator of Historic Saybrook, CT Facebook page: "This is perhaps the oldest photo I've seen of the Castle. The castle was originally named "Hartlands" by Elizabeth and George Beach, for Elizabeth's Hart family relatives. JA Ayer photo. Photo contributor, John Courtney."
Sources:
Old Saybrook Historical Society – history of the property
Historic Saybrook, CT Facebook page – early photo of the castle
Contributors:
Ed Phillips: author