You don't know it, but you totally know William Gilette. No, he has nothing to do with Gilette razors. William Gilette was an American stage actor in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who was most famous for playing Sherlock Holmes on stage about a bazillion times. He developed what we know as the stereotypical Holmes: deerstalker hat, crazy-big pipe, and "Elementary, my dear Watson." Gilette made a buttload of money on the stage, and so designed his dream home, an amazing collection of custom doors, secret passages and rooms, and even a train.
For our eighth anniversary, Marvin took me to Gilette Castle State Park, William Gillete's imposing estate. See, Marvin knows I'm a sucker for old homes filled with the accouterments of long-dead famous and/or rich people. And the weirder, the better. Gilette's home, perched way up on a hill, has a beautiful view of a river and is surrounded by woods. The outside is made of stone, and the inside is complemented by custom furniture, over a hundred wood doors, and seagrass mats used as wallpaper.
As an actor, Gillette designed his home with a sense of theatricality in mind. He had a secret passage that would either let him make a hasty retreat if someone he didn't want to see was visiting, or allow him to appear seemingly out of nowhere to surprise his guest with a grand entrance. The house has over 100 doors, all made of wood and which work with a complicated series of springs. Each door was designed by Gilette and each door is completely different.
Gilette loved cats and at any one time had 15-20 that had the run of the house. He designed a wooden table that sits in the living room and has wooden tassels hanging around the edge for the cats to play with. His knickknacks were cemented to the fireplace mantle so the cats wouldn't knock them over, and the steam heat pipes throughout the house were covered in chicken wire so the cats wouldn't get too close and burn themselves.
Gilette loved mechanical things and had a workroom in the bottom of the house where he drew up plans and designs for the house and all of his own inventions. For instance, he designed a fire suppression system for the house (he lived so far out in the boonies that he knew it would take the fire department awhile to get to him). It involved containers on the roof that collected rainwater and a rope he could pull that would release the water and send it running over the building. He also designed his own furniture, including a nifty dresser in his bedroom that had swing-out compartments to hold his jewelry and other man things.
But perhaps the coolest and most crazy-rich-man thing Gilette owned were two trains that ran on three miles of track around the property. The engines were 1/4 the size of a real train and he had both a steam-powered engine and an electric engine. The track ran around the property, going over bridges, taking sharp turns, and going through a curved tunnel that Gilette designed to scare his guests by making it look like they were going into a dark hole with no end in sight. The tracks have been removed, but the park provides a guided walk that takes you over the original route. You even get to walk through the tunnel! Famous person alert: Albert Einstein road the train!
On our walk, one of the people in our group found a railroad spike that was left from the tracks!!!
Gilette had a personal valet named Yukitaka Osaki, a Japanese man who came to the US to attend Brown and got a job on one of Gillette's boats. Osaki came from a prominent family; his brother was the mayor of Tokyo and gave the cherry blossom trees to Washington, DC. Osaki went to town by mule every day to get Gilette's mail and carried a gun, just in case. The two men became close friends and Gilette built a house for Osaki on the property and left instructions in his will that Osaki should retain the house and a greenhouse that he built for as long as Osaki lived.
Honestly, I've barely scratched the surface here. Gilette also collected art and books, owned a couple of boats, and continued to act up until a few years before he died. After seeing Gilette's workroom, his secret passages, and learning about his fascination with mechanical things, Marvin declared that Gilette could have been a superhero, a la Batman. Indeed!
Photos of Gilette Castle courtesy of yourFAVORITEmartian. Check out the whole Gillete Castle set here.
