Hey Darryl Kerrigan - THIS is a castle - and it’s for sale
Instead of a normal home, isn't it time you bought a medieval-style castle complete with drawbridge and moat? This U.S. castle home is for sale, with all the mod-cons like a trap-door to a dungeon!
Residz Team 3 min read
A 1969 Christmas promise from a husband to his wife that he would build her a castle is the story behind this extraordinary U.S. home for sale. Unlike the ironic use of ‘castle’ used for the Kerrigans’ home in ‘The Castle’ movie, this 1990-built home does replicate a medieval-style castle complete with drawbridge and moat. It isn’t much more expensive than decent houses in big Australian cities, but it has a lot more wow factor!
You choose. A 4-bdrm South Yarra home…..or a castle!
Sotheby’s International Realty has the 5-bedroom Michigan property listed for sale at $2.5 million US. This converts to around $3.5 million AUD, around the price of a four-bedroom home in Melbourne’s South Yarra, Sydney’s Surry Hills, Perth’s Dalkeith, Tasmania’s Sandy Bay, Adelaide’s Unley Park, or Brisbane’s Paddington.
$10 million US build cost
The estate agent listing says the castle, which is taller than a four-storey building, cost $10 million US and took six years to build - using artisans from all over the world.
Hidden features excite the imagination
Brendel Hightower (yes, really!), the assistant editor of Detroit Free Press, reports the castle holds a surprise in just about every room: hidden closets, escape rooms, a hidden spiral staircase that leads to the roof, hidden passageways between walls, lofts, tables that fold out of walls, a trap door to a dungeon, a hidden underground grotto with jacuzzi, a hallway of mirrors and roof access to battlements.
20-year dream and money no object
Hightower writes it was a 20-year dream of James LeBlanc, who died in May at 72. LeBlanc was an engineer who led companies that earned federal defence contracts, and apparently ‘money was no object’ to fulfill his promise to wife Vera. His engineering background is hinted at with the use of 60 tons of steel in the castle’s frame.
The perfect palace
The castle sits on around 2.4 hectares of wooded grounds surrounded by a wrought iron fence and two gated towers, and is described by Sotheby’s as ‘the perfect palace’.
It even has a pub, oh and a street straight out of Dickens
Sotheby’s says the castle has 26 rooms, an elevator, five fireplaces, and a Tudor style pub, and Hightower adds that there’s also a four-car garage that is tricked up to look like a Charles Dickens-era streetscape with a night sky alive with ‘stars’.
LeBlanc wasn’t leaving anything out of his grand home, including a billiards room, a stone vault-like wine cellar, and a home theatre.
Lloyd Wright and Saarinen county connection
The home sits among other luxury homes in a private, gated subdivision at 2009 Victoria Hill Oakland Township, Michigan. Oakland County, north of Detroit, has a population with the state’s highest per capita income. A short drive away is the city of Bloomfield Hills where Fortune 500 executives live, Frank Lloyd Wright designed two homes, and where the Finnish-born master architect Eero Saarinen lived and worked. What Lloyd Wright and Saarinen might have thought of the LeBlanc castle will never be known.
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Images: Sotheby’s International Realty website