For years, I’ve been wondering where they might have gone. You know, the pictures that I covertly took of the interiors of Picket Post, William Boyce Thompson’s Castle on the Rocks, when it was opened to visitors for a heartbeat in 2011. Curators of course that no pictures be taken of the interiors, but I did so anywhere, figuring, as always that it’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
Unfortunately, access to the second floor of the house was forbidden. Come to think of it, I don’t think I even got to tour the second floor when the Rose family opened the house to tourists a decade before that. Those tours, as I’ve previously written, largely focused on the owner’s curio collection, which might have been impressive had I not come to actually see the house. The plethora of inane nick-nacks interfered with architectural enjoyment.
Thompson worked with draftsmen at his nearby Magma Mine to design the 26-room mansion, built in phases between 1923 and 1929 by Jack Davey, a local contractor. The compound initially consisted of three separate structures — a two-story main house, a small residence for the honorary colonel’s wife, Gertrude, and a now destroyed three-story private retreat, the Cliff House.
An enclosed veranda wraps three sides of the main floor of the main house. The floor included a dining room, library, sunroom, and bedrooms, accessible from the central portion of the house and the veranda. The kitchen was located downstairs, along with servants’ quarters. A dumbwaiter served the dining room.
