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Once a fortress for weapons, the castle is only accessible by private boat.
The castle was built by Francis Bannerman, a 20th-century Scottish arms trader, but was abandoned in the 1950s.
In the early 1990s, the Bannerman Castle Trust led efforts to restore the castle and island to make it safe for the public to visit. It's been accessible since 2004.
Today, the facility hosts tours and as used as a theater venue. Here's what it looks like.
Bannerman Castle is on Pollepel Island, which is about 60 miles north of New York City.
The abandoned castle is visible from Metro-North Railroad's Hudson train line.
To get to the castle, I took a Lyft from the Manitou train station to Donahue Memorial park in the town of Cornwall, New York.
The park sits on the west side of the Hudson River. There, I met up with guides from the Bannerman Castle Trust, the group that oversees the preservation and maintenance of the castle.
A boat waited at the park's public dock.
I crammed into the boat with two guides and a handful of volunteer gardeners who do landscaping work on Pollepel Island.
It took less than 20 minutes to get to the castle. From the dock, its beautiful, sturdy-looking walls made the building appear almost functional.
But my guide told me that I absolutely could not go inside.
From the dock, we climbed 72 stairs to reach the island.
Closer up, I understood why it's not safe to enter the castle. My guide explained that the towers of the castle require external beams for support.
The braces are made of steel. Each individual section weighs 250 pounds.
But even with this support, there's still a risk that the walls could fall.
So all visitors must stay at least 100 feet away from the castle. "Observation decks" are set up around the castle at picturesque vantage points.
A history of accidental explosions and weather damage at Bannerman Castle have left it in this decrepit state.
Francis Bannerman VI, an arms dealer who lived in Brooklyn, bought Pollepel Island in 1900. He wanted a place outside the city to store an arsenal of munitions, according to the New York Times, so he built the fortress and an accompanying harbor.
Bannerman's sons took over the business when he died in 1918. But in 1920, a room full of gun powder exploded, shattering some of the windows.
Forty-seven years later, the Bannerman family sold the island to New York State, according to the New York Times. It eventually became part of the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve.
But in 1992, Neil Caplan, a resident of nearby Beacon, New York, formed the Bannerman Castle Trust. The group raised money to restore the island; Caplan is now its executive director.
