History of Gillette Castle

Gillette Castle is the 24-room fieldstone mansion that actor William Gillette built between 1914 and 1919 on the southernmost of the Seven Sisters hills, 200 feet above the Connecticut River in East Haddam. Gillette called it the Seventh Sister and insisted it was not a castle. After his death in 1937 the State of Connecticut bought the house and land in 1943, and it opened as a state park and museum on October 7, 1944.

Finding the Site

According to CT Humanities, Gillette was cruising up the Connecticut River on his houseboat, the Aunt Polly, in 1911 when he saw the chain of seven hills on the East Haddam bank and decided to build there. He moored the boat below the hill and lived on it, or at a house he owned on Long Island, while the work went on (the Aunt Polly).

Building the Seventh Sister

DEEP says it took twenty men five years, from 1914 to 1919, to finish the main structure. The Friends of Gillette Castle State Park add that the Porteus-Walker Company of Hartford was the general contractor, that the stone was fieldstone gathered on the property and nearby, and that the walls hang on a frame of steel I-beams. Gillette kept changing the house and expanded it from 1923 to 1926. The Friends put the finished cost at $1.1 million. Locals had their own names for it: the "Hadlyme stone heap" or "the pile of rocks."

Inside, a team of five master carpenters hand-carved the southern white oak. Gillette designed 47 different doors, each with its own carved wooden latch, and set heavy furniture such as the dining table on tracks so it would not scratch the floors. The house had electricity from its own generator before the rest of the town, steam heat from a coal boiler, and bathrooms with hot and cold running water. The rooms include a 1,500-square-foot living room, a greenhouse, an art gallery, a library and two tower rooms. See them on a castle tour.

The Railroad

Gillette loved trains. In 1927 he built a quarter-scale, narrow-gauge railroad around the estate, with a steam engine and an electric engine, passenger cars, and three miles of track with bridges, trestles and a tunnel. His station, Grand Central, looked out over the river. Much of the trail system follows the old railbed today (train trail), and Grand Central is now the park's picnic shelter.

From Private Estate to State Park

Gillette died in 1937 at 83. His will said he did not want the house to fall to "some blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded." His relatives put it up for auction in 1938 and turned down the winning $35,000 bid from a real estate broker. In 1943 the State of Connecticut, helped by the Connecticut Forest and Park Association, bought it for $30,000. Gillette Castle State Park opened to the public on October 7, 1944.

The Park Today

DEEP manages the castle and 184 acres of woods along the river, and says around 300,000 people visit each year. The park reaches from the castle down to the Chester–Hadlyme ferry landing and the river shore, where the burned hull of the Aunt Polly is one of Connecticut's two underwater archaeological preserves. In 2026 DEEP added a new pergola built from Norway spruce that Civilian Conservation Corps crews planted in Cockaponset State Forest in the 1930s, harvested in 2025 and milled at the state's Portland sawmill.

More History

• William Gillette: the actor, Sherlock Holmes and the will.
• The Aunt Polly and the Osaki house: the houseboat and Gillette's valet.
• Train trail: the railroad, the tunnel and Grand Central.