Visit to a Castle in the Clouds

That's the name it goes by, but it's not really a castle as you would imagine — not like ones from stories or in photos. Instead, this "castle" we toured last week is right here in NH.

Rather than an actual castle, it's a large mountaintop mansion built by a self-made New England millionaire. It's open to the public under the name Castle in the Clouds. Views from this mountaintop estate were nothing less than spectacular during our visit.

It was named Lucknow by its owners, Thomas and Olive Plant, who built their country estate from 1913-1914 on a mountaintop  in Moultonborough, NH, overseeing Lake Winnipesaukee. We learned both about the home's history and the man who built it during our visit. 

The original 6,300-acre property featured the 16-room mansion, stable, garage, two gatehouses, a 100-foot greenhouse, farm buildings, an 18-hole golf course, tennis court, man-made lake, and 45 miles of carriage and bridle trails. The name is believed to to be after the city of Lucknow in India. 

Plant, a native of Bath, ME, worked in several factories including one in which he learned all aspects of the shoe business. After winning a bet, he invested in a shoe factory, become owner by the age of 32, renamed it, and then made his fortune manufacturing shoes under the Queen Quality label. The shoes were made exclusively for women and were widely advertised in leading publications of the time, including McClure's Magazine.

Queen Quality Shoe Ad: Internet Source

The Thomas Plant Shoe Factory in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, MA, was said to be the world’s largest shoe factory of the time with over 4,000 workers and an estimated annual output of over 3 million shoes. It was designed by the architectural firm of Frederick Law Olmsted of Brookline, MA, designers of NYC's Central Park and the Fenway in Boston. Housed in a six-story building, the plant covered 13-acres with a library, gym, swimming pool, billiards room, dance hall, barber shop, bowling alley,  nursery and kindergarten and a staffed medical facility. (By the 1970s, the former shoe factory was used as artist workspaces. It burned in February 1976 in a spectacular fire reported to be arson. The site was redeveloped as a strip mall in the 1990s.)

Thomas Plant Shoe Factory, MA: Internet Source

Plant retired at the age of 51 in 1910, after selling his factory to United Shoe Machinery Company for millions after years of litigation and industrial confrontation. He used the money to build his estate in the Arts and Crafts style. Construction elements were reflective of Norwegian, Swiss, Norman and Japanese architecture. 

The Arts and Crafts period has been defined as a social and artistic movement in the second half of the 19th century. It emphasized a return to handwork, skilled workmen, and attention to design in the decorative arts and was a seen as a reaction against a decline in standards associated with machinery and factory production. In the U.S., this style was often called Mission style. 

Designed by the Boston architectural firm of J. Williams Beal & Sons, the house exhibits skilled hand craftsmanship in its interior and exterior design. An estimated 1,000 workers were on-site at one time. 

Lumber for the interior and exterior woodwork in the mansion was cut from the property and hand-hewn in the shipyards of Bath, ME, before being shipped back to the site by railroad, boat and horse.

According to Plant in 1924: “These men are skilled in the shaping and fastening together of ship timbers with oaken dowels; work that lasts a lifetime.” 

The mansion's exterior construction was with steel beam and terra cotta blocks. Interior work was done using hand-cut stone and hand-scalloped oak timber framing. The stone exterior is made from granite cut from the surrounding mountains. These stones were hand-carved by Italian stone masons. 

We learned that on a good day, these masons would cut and lay in place no more than three stones. Plant was said to have instructed that the stones be shaped primarily as pentagons, symbolizing the five great powers of the world — at that time the Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom.

Furnishings were handcrafted by the best artisans of the time. The interiors featured Tiffany-designed glass. State-of-the-art appliances and modern technologies were installed throughout the mansion. 

Lucknow was one of the first homes to have a working telephone and electricity, which was powered by a water-powered generator. Other modern features included a circular shower, central vacuum system, self cleaning stove, and a brine cooled refrigerator. There was also a small hidden room in the library, where Plant reportedly would retreat (lower left photo below). 

Thomas and Olive Plant lived at Lucknow with a staff of more than 25 servants until overspending and poor financial decisions left them in financial ruin by the end of the 1920s. Plant lost a considerable amount of his wealth investing in Russian bonds and in Cuban sugar. He declared bankruptcy after the 1929 U.S. stock exchange collapse.

Realizing his financial predicament, Plant tried unsuccessfully to sell the estate from the mid-1920s through the Great Depression. Bank creditors allowed the couple to remain living there as the estate was dissolved. Plant died broke in 1941 and afterwards, the estate was foreclosed. According to local stories, a collection was taken among neighbors and friends to pay burial expenses. His widow relocated to family in another state. Creditors auctioned off the furnishings and the mansion was sold. 

Internet source

For 15 years after Plant’s death, Lucknow was the summer home of Fred and Susan Tobey of Plymouth, NH, and their extended family. In 1956, the estate was sold to Richard and Donald Robie, and in 1959, they opened it to the public under the name, Castle in the Clouds. Richard Robie, Jr. continued operations until 1991 when the Castle Acquisition Partnership purchased the estate to develop Castle Springs bottled water, it continued to operate it as a tourist attraction and also included a bottling plant tour. In 1995, the Lucknow Brewery was added, but it shut down in 2002 due to lack of sales. 

Castle in the Clouds is now owned and operated by the Castle Preservation Society, a private non-profit corporation which manages the historic building and grounds. Preservation has been an ongoing process due to wood rot, water damage, and vandalism over the years. The mansion, carriage house, gift shop, cafe and patio are open to the public from late May to early October. In 2018, the estate was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2018.

Our first-time visit was extra special because we shared it went with two Oregon friends, Thomas and Nancy, who we visited last year during our cross-country road trip.

This year they reciprocated and spent a couple of days in NH, including an afternoon and evening in Nashua. While here they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary and are now on the road homeward bound. Over the weekend, they texted that they were driving through the Great Smokey Mountains.