Inside the Creation of a Fantasy Castle in the Hudson Valley
Some 48 years ago, newlyweds Toni Ann and Peter Wing began to think about building a home in their Hudson Valley hometown of Millbrook on 12 acres of land that had been in the Wing family since 1888. They’d met as teenagers, and Peter had spent his childhood exploring the rocky grounds; he knew exactly where to build. But it wasn’t a house he had in mind. “Peter said he wanted to build a castle,” says Toni. It appealed to her too. “I guess we were just romantics,” she says.
They were also young—both 23—and short on money. But that didn’t deter them. A month after the couple were married in June 1971, they broke ground. Peter designed and, over the next 23 years, built the castle, based on his sketches and largely using recycled and salvaged materials they bought or found throughout the Hudson Valley, including pieces from 11 barns they bought and demolished “just before that was vogue,” says Toni. “We’d save the stone foundations, floorboards, beams; even the nails we’d take out and reuse.” They bought bricks for a nickel apiece “and abutments of an old railroad bridge in a farmer’s field that Peter had seen when he was eight years old.” For the first three years, the couple lived under the structure in progress, camping out under a tarp. After that, the framework was solid enough to move indoors.
But the work wasn’t done—not even close. For the next 22 years, the couple continued to work on the castle, Peter waking up at 4 a.m. and often working until way past sunset. In the winters, when construction was difficult, he earned a living as an artist doing sculpture, painting murals, designing restaurant interiors and buying, restoring, and selling old cars. Toni gave birth to two children. “I don’t think either of us thought construction would last that long,” says Toni. “If someone said, you’re going to do this for the next 47 years of your life, we’d have said no way. We thought it was a two-year project. We were pretty naive.” As Toni and Peter’s son Charles puts it, “It was like growing up inside a gigantic art sculpture. It really put the word ‘work’ in ‘work of art.’”
In the ’80s, the castle started becoming something of a tourist attraction, with frequent guests hearing about it from neighbors or driving by and feel compelled to get out of the car. That’s when the family decided to open the castle to formal tours. Peter loved sharing his work with others while being able to subsidize the project. Within three months of finishing the castle, says Toni, “Peter announced, ‘We should have a B&B,’” says Toni. “That’s when he began building what became the second half of the castle, the one with guest rooms, and that was the next 22 years of our life.”
Six years ago, that phase was complete—or close enough that Toni and Peter opened Wing’s Castle to overnight guests. Peter died in a car accident in 2014, and Toni continues to run it as a bed-and-breakfast with Charles’s help.
“Peter would have kept working on it forever,” says Toni. “He would have always been touching up or adding to or topping off.” An in-progress grotto that Peter was working on at the time of his death, says Charles, “a rock-cave-ish room that’ll feature a hot tub and ceiling stalactites,” is like “any other DIY project a family might be chipping away at—it will get done.”
In the meantime, Toni says, she has never tired of life at the castle or thought of trading it in for something more traditional. It now overlooks Millbrook Vineyards and Winery, both of which are located on land that was part of the original Wing family farm. Her favorite spot in the house is the moat, a swimming pool that travels beneath the castle through a tunnel. “It’s where we go to relax, and be with family,” she says. “Which of course was really the entire point.”
Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
