Hammond Castle

History

Hammond Castle is located on the Atlantic coast in the Magnolia area of Gloucester, Massachusetts. The castle, which was constructed between 1926 and 1929, was the home, laboratory, and museum of John Hays Hammond Jr., an inventor and pioneer in the study of remote control who held over four hundred patents. The building is composed of modern and 15th-, 16th-, and 18th-century architectural elements and sits on a rocky cliff overlooking Gloucester Harbor.

The castle operates as the Hammond Castle Museum, displaying Hammond's collection of Roman, medieval, and Renaissance artifacts as well as exhibits about his life and inventions. The Great Hall contains a large pipe organ which has been used for concerts and recordings by organists including Richard Ellsasser and Virgil Fox as well as many other well known artists of the time. The instrument was built by Hammond starting in the early 1920s before the castle was built. It was subsequently moved to the castle upon the castle’s completion and had multiple stages of major changes across the years. Most notably, in the 1940s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s. As of 2004, the organ is no longer functional.

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