Yesterday Jesse and I drove up to Gloucester, MA. We had heard about a place called Hammond Castle, built by John Hays Hammond Jr in the twenties for his wife. Somewhat similar in style to Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Hammond had a passion for Medieval and Renaissance antiquities and decided to build a castle to house his collection. His castle is a mish-mash of different architectural styles, including a little French, a little English, and some flying buttresses just for good measure. I can't believe we hadn't come here before, it seemed like a little bit of Europe tucked away on the North Shore. If you are visiting the area I highly recommend making the side trip.
Hammond was an inventor and researcher and had more than 400 patents at the end of his life. Most of them pertained to radio communication and widely impacted US and global naval operations. Today Yale seems to have most of his research equipment, which is too bad because it would have been great to see his lab.
