Gingerbread Castle painting. (Photo courtesy of Bill Truran)
Here is a history of the marketing of the local landmark, written by historian Ron Dupont.
Twenty-five years before Walt Disney built a fantasy castle for the delight of children and adults, one man did it in Hamburg.
Decades before big brands funded theme park attractions to cross-market their products, one man did it in Hamburg.
Years before marketing pundits talked about the “synergy” of using one product to promote another, one man figured it out in Hamburg.
He was Frederich Handel Bennett, owner of Wheatsworth Mills. He built the Gingerbread Castle.
The castle was embraced by Hamburg, which dubbed itself “The Children’s Town.” It put the landmark on its road signs. It named streets after fairy tale characters. It made little Hamburg nationally famous.
Now, the Gingerbread Castle is a faded relic struggling for survival.
In 1920, Bennett bought and expanded the old Hamburg Mill property, which he named after his brand, Wheatsworth. But his line of flour and baked goods struggled against huge national brands, such as Nabisco.
To publicize his products and generate buzz, he needed a gimmick. An old lime kiln near the mills, left over from the 1870s, reminded him of a castle. Something folks could visit?
Bennett came from a family of music lovers (he was named for the composer of “The Messiah”) and he loved music, too.
In 1927, he saw a new production, “Hansel and Gretel,” at the Metropolitan Opera. The sets, including the witch’s castle, were designed by Austrian emigre Joseph Urban, who also designed Mar-a-Lago, home of a well-known former president.
“The new scenery was greeted with long and loud applause by the audience,” noted the New York Post.
Bennett hired Urban to design a similar castle of cookies and frosting, using the old historic kiln as the base. Thus was born the Gingerbread Castle.
The castle attracted attention to the Wheatsworth line, and visitors also toured the Wheatsworth Mills. Suddenly Hamburg became a tourist destination, and stories about the Gingerbread Castle and Wheatsworth Mills spread through newspapers and magazines across the U.S. Attendance topped 100,000 annually.
But Bennett did not own his creation for long, selling it in 1931 to Nabisco. The cookie giant was looking to buy the mills, not a tourist attraction, but they knew a moneymaker when they saw it and continued to operate the castle.
In 1943, the entire Wheatsworth/castle property was sold to the Danenburg family, owners of Plastoid, which became a major Hamburg business for the next 40-plus years. The castle was operated by a subsidiary, and operations were expanded in 1955, when the restaurant across the street was built along with a train ride.
When Plastoid closed in the 1980s, the castle did too. It went through a complex history of subsequent owners, some of whom tried to bring back the fantasy attraction, without long-term success.
One of the last individual owners stripped and sold some of the castle’s valuable artwork. A hammered copper life-size figure of a knight on horseback designed by Urban, originally adorning the castle’s peak, was sold at a Christie’s auction in 2010 for more than $800,000.
After years in seeming limbo, the Gingerbread Castle was sold in 2017 to Don Oriolo Jr., whose father, Don Sr. , and grandfather, Joe, owned and produced the “Felix the Cat” cartoons. Don Sr. also owns the well-known Blue Arrow Farm in Pine Island, N.Y., a fantasy landmark of its own.
Don Oriolo Jr. has dedicated himself to preserving this landmark of fantasy entertainment. But it’s a heavy lift.
“I have been dedicating my time and personal resources to this noble cause ...this task is immense since the property had been abandoned and neglected for nearly 20 years,” he says. “Special custom-made architectural details, which had been crafted in the 1920s, had been stolen by many trespassers over the years.
“I have discovered that even in the castle’s damaged condition, so many people, both young and old, get such joy from the memories of the past and also feel uplifted by the historical property. I am trying my best to complete this job but I could really use some help. At this moment, the castle is in desperate need of a new roof and steel structural reinforcement. Hopefully together we can all make a difference and bring back the joy!”
Oriolo has established a GoFundMe page to raise $65,000 online at gofundme.com/f/save-the-gingerbread-castle
With any luck, there is yet another storybook chapter for the Gingerbread Castle, and it could end “happily ever after.”
Bill Truran, Sussex County’s historian, may be contacted at billt1425@gmail.com