Status: Unknown

Hidden behind trees and thick brush atop a hill overlooking Untermeyer Lake sits a crumbling mansion that very closely resembles a castle. Due to a fire and many years of deterioration, it’s been reduced to a mere stone shell.

About two years ago, my friends told me of a “castle” they had stumbled across while hiking in the Kinnelon/Pequannock area. They described it to me–high walls of stone, rusted iron gates, stairs to nowhere, and even an additional stone structure behind it with no apparent entrances. After hearing about this majestic “castle”, I just had to see it for myself.

When I first went there, I knew nothing of its history. Many internet searches turned up nothing and this “castle” would remain mysterious to me for quite some time. Finally, someone alerted me to an issue of Weird NJ who had dubbed this crumbling palace “The Gate” because of the iron gate that once sealed off the driveway and then was lost when the land surrounding it began to be developed.

I learned that this once French Provincial mansion was built in 1920 for Milton Untermeyer, a wealthy New York stockbroker. The house had seven gables, numerous fireplaces, and was surrounded by dogwoods, fruit trees, beech trees and other shrubbery that still remains there to this day. It even had a boathouse on the lake that still exists. The mansion was later sold to Theodore Bender, a physician from Paterson, and then to the Gilbreth family of Montclair. The Gilbreth family intended to use it as a winter resort, but this never came to pass due to a fire that almost completely destroyed the mansion in 1968.

My most recent visit brought about a deep sense of uneasiness within me, as the bulldozers and other construction equipment just seemed to be much closer to the Untermeyer mansion than when I last visited. I was always able to find my way up to the mansion with ease, but this time around, I had to fight my way through bushes and thick shrubbery. It was a very good thing that I knew precisely where the mansion is. My heart was racing as I struggled up the steep hill unsure if the mansion would even still be there since I’ve been hearing rumors that ’something’ is being done with it. I sighed with relief as the collapsed roof over what might have once been a solarium became visible. As I tiptoed through the brush and closer to the ruins, I could tell that something was amiss. Somehow, it looked…different. But how? There was an entire wall in the front of the mansion that I had never seen before…and then I realized what it was. All of the trees, vines, ivy, and shrubbery were GONE. It was still the beautiful, fallen castle that I remembered, but it was naked. As I walked around the interior of the structure, I found ladders, coolers, and other evidence of construction workers and it was apparent that all of the trees and overgrowth that filled the inside had been removed. The plus side is, it made it a LOT easier for me to take pictures.

I didn’t get the impression that the mansion is going to be destroyed, but it seemed as though perhaps restoration is possible. Will it be restored to its original glory? Or will it be turned into a Mc Mansion and look the same as all the other huge houses around it? We shall see.

And whatever happened to the iron gate that once defined this landmark? Well, it’s been recycled and put to good use! A family who lives nearby dug the rusted, broken, and bent gate out of heaps of debris after it was carelessly tossed aside when the land was being developed and restored them. And with the restored gates they made this.

- Ember, 2004