Hammond Castle

Talk about eccentric! Though its owner named it “Abbadia Mare,” Latin for “abbey by the sea,” this Gloucester landmark is now known as the Hammond Castle. Built in 1926 with his own very particular tastes in mind, John Hayes Hammond Jr. didn’t hold back– he constructed this home as a wedding present for his wife Irene Fenton Hammond and included secret passageways, a War Room, a round library, and an archway carved from lava from Mt. Vesuvius. The swimming pool pictured above had a “weather control system” in case Hammond felt like swimming in the rain and the property’s Great Hall features an eight story, 8200-pipe pipe organ. He also used the home to display his collection of Roman, medieval, and Renaissance artifacts– one of which was a skull from a sailor that had supposedly sailed to America with Christopher Columbus. What did this person do to be able to afford building such a grand abode? He was one of America’s premier inventors and held so many patents that at the time only one person held more: Thomas Edison. His work with radio waves has given him the nickname of “The Father of the Remote Control.” The castle is now a museum that is open to the public April through October.