Former Castle Point, Stevens Castle (Hoboken, New Jersey)

 historical layer / disappeared object  Add category

Col. John Stevens III (son of John Stevens Jr., politician and delegate to the Continental Congress in 1783) a Captain in Washington's army during the Revolutionary War, purchased from the State of New Jersey in 1784 the land included in the present-day 55-acre campus of SIT. Here he built Castle Point, his estate on the hill overlooking New York harbor. This summer villa, first picture, stood from 1784-1853. Col. Stevens served as treasurer of NJ, a pioneer in the development of the steamboat, and by 1825 had designed the first American-built steam locomotive.

Edwin Augustus Stevens, one of Col. Stevens' sons, inherited the estate and in 1853 replaced Castle Point with a 40-room Victorian mansion, which came to be know as Stevens Castle. He built and operated profitably the first commercial railroad in the United States, the Camden and Amboy Railroad, and was active in the design and construction of ironclad vessels for the U.S. Navy. After Edwin's passing in 1868, he gifted the estate to found SIT. The mansion stood on the campus for many decades, but was sadly demolished in 1959 and replaced with the bland tower, Howe Center. The castle gatehouse remains.