Abercrombie & Fitch founder’s castle on the market for $2.9M in Westchester County, NY

A storied castle where the co-founder of Abercrombie & Fitch and his family summered a century ago is seeking a new owner to write its next chapter.

David T. Abercrombie’s 49.6-acre estate can be yours for the princely price of $2.9 million. It’s located in the town of New Castle, although the mailing address is in the town of Ossining.

Abercrombie, who opened the clothing brand’s first store in 1892 in Manhattan, had the imposing 25-room stone castle built in the late 1920s.

Nowadays, the Scottish-style castle sits boarded up and under video surveillance to keep out the curious and vandalous. The estate is listed by Christina DiMinno of Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty, who has been involved with the property since 2017.

The stone mansion’s design was inspired by Abercrombie’s wife, Lucy. Her family owned the Abbott Steel company, builder of the Monitor and the Merrimack warships and the steel reinforcements for the U.S. Capitol rotunda, according to Doug Leen, whose great-uncle was David T. Abercrombie.

Locally quarried granite and fieldstone was used to construct the castle’s 24-inch-thick walls, DiMinno said, and steel reinforcement beams were brought in from Pennsylvania.

The couple named their home Elda, an acronym using the first letter of their children’s names: Elizabeth, Lucy, David and Abbott.

The estate boasted trails for hiking and horseback riding, a swimming pool, shooting range, and a pond for fishing. The trails designed by David Abercrombie are still marked on the property.

The castle’s rustic lodge-style great room had an exposed beam ceiling, chandeliers, Persian rugs, mooseheads covering the walls and a Steinway piano, Leen said.

“He was the consummate outdoorsman of the time,” Leen said. “Abercrombie & Fitch outfitted Admiral Byrd, Ernest Hemingway, Amelia Earhart, Jack Kennedy.”

A fire in the 1940s destroyed a portion of the five-story, 4,337-square-foot castle and decimated the interior.

“The structure is sound, we’ve had that identified, but the interior must be redone or rebuilt,” DiMinno said.

Potential buyers would be an owner keen on restoring it to its former grandeur, or a developer — the property can accommodate single-family homes on 2-acre plots, she said. It’s owned by international investors.

The estate comprises three parcels, two of which are undeveloped. The castle and a stone barn sit on 26.25 acres.

Abercrombie family tragedies

Abercrombie owned a three-story factory off Dale Avenue in Ossining that waterproofed canvas by melting paraffin using gasoline, according to the Ossining Historical Society.

His daughter, Lucy, died in an accident at the factory in November 1929 when the mixture was set off by a spark. She was taken to the Ossining Hospital on Spring Street (now the site of the Star of Bethlehem Church) where she died.

Abercrombie’s son, David, also died tragically at age 35 after he was kicked in the abdomen by a horse on his Wyoming ranch in 1937.

David T. Abercrombie, whose family once owned hundreds of acres in the vicinity, died in 1931, and his widow later sold the property.

After World War II, Elda was vacant until 1964 when Jim Harrick, president of Harrick Scientific Corp., bought the castle and his family lived there for more than 20 years, according to a 2020 article in The Journal News when the property was priced at $3.5 million.

When Leen visited Elda in 2010, it was owned by Beth Lamont, wife of Corliss Lamont, a socialist author, teacher and humanist philosopher who died at the estate in 1993. She subsequently sold the property to an investor.

“When I was there it was graffitied up,” Leen said. “The last trip I made the fixtures were torn off the walls, doors were smashed in, hinges were stolen.”

Leen, a former ranger in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, is holding out hope that this piece of family history can recapture its glory.

“I would love to see this become a public park and the building restored,” said Leen, whose website contains information about the estate.

The Castle Elda

• Address: 249 Croton Dam Road, New Castle, NY

• 49.6 acres on three lots

• Year built: 1927

• Annual property taxes: $74,000

Robert Brum is a freelance journalist who writes about the Hudson Valley. Contact him and read his work at robertbrum.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Abercrombie & Fitch founder’s castle up for sale in Westchester NY