Adventures of Boreas: Day 369 – At Thousand Island Club, Alexandria Bay, NY

The main reason we are staying at the Thousand Island Club for an extra day is so that we can tour Boldt Castle, which is on Heart Island, just three-quarters of a mile from here. George & Louise Boldt (George was the most successful hotel magnate in America, managing/profit sharing the Waldorf-Astoria in New York and the Bellevue-Stratford in Philadelphia) began spending summers in the Thousand Islands in the 1890’s and work on the outbuildings to support the castle they had planned went on between 1894 and 1896. In 1899 the old wooden cottage was removed from the island and work on the castle began. From the brochure distributed by the visitor’s center on the island, “Boldt Castle was to be the testimony of the unsurpassed love of a man for his wife. The magnificence of the structures was to be equaled only by George Boldt’s adoration of Louise, who was the love of his life and the reason for the construction of such an elaborate summer home.” When Louise unexpectedly died in 1904, George stopped construction on the castle and never set foot on Heart Island again.

From 1904 to 1977, Boldt Castle deteriorated to a state of disrepair. In 1977 the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority assumed ownership and began a rehabilitation program. Many of the castle’s 120 rooms have been restored to give visitors an idea of what it might have looked like if it were ever completed. There are also displays in some of the empty rooms that talk about the castle’s construction as well as the Boldt family and their history. It is fascinating to think about the lives these families must have lived and the money they spent on their many homes and their recreational pursuits.

Miles: 0 Bridges: 0 Locks: 0