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• 120-year-old Searles Castle stands in Massachusetts' Berkshire mountains • Seven-floor French chateau-style castle going for kingly sum of $15 million • It's been private home, a private school, conference center, tourist site • Balconies, terraces, lagoon, tennis courts, temple, dungeon -- but no moat
GREAT BARRINGTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- The Searles Castle has towered over this Berkshire town for 120 years, its seven turrets and blue dolomite exterior creating a fortress at the end of Main Street.
The French chateau-style castle is for sale -- a $15 million property joining a small niche of the world's luxury real estate market.
Searles Castle is no ordinary mansion. It may not have been designed to keep enemies away from a royal family, but it has all the trappings to make it worthy of Sleeping Beauty.
There isn't a moat, but the seven-floor castle has a dungeon that could be used for a friendlier purpose -- a restaurant, perhaps, or an extensive wine cellar.
Thirty-six fireplaces are scattered among more than 40 rooms, one of which once contained a pipe organ and served as a mini-concert hall.
Marble is everywhere -- rising in columns, carved as mantles and in slabs as flooring.
Balconies and terraces overlook the property's sprawling 61 acres, which include a T-shaped lagoon, tennis courts and a garden temple guarded by two marble sphinx sculptures.
And if the 60,000-square-foot castle seems too overwhelming, it's just a short walk from the front gate to a busy row of restaurants and shops. Think the tax bill is too high? Cross the street and file a complaint at Town Hall.
Built in 1888, the castle was commissioned by Mary Hopkins, the widow of railroad tycoon Mark Hopkins. Mary Hopkins hired noted interior decorator Edward Searles for the project, and the two married a year before it was finished.
Hopkins died in 1891, but Searles stayed in the castle until 1902 before spending more time in Methuen. After his death in 1920, the castle spent the next three decades as a private school for girls. It then changed hands among business owners and an insurance company, serving at different times as a storage area, conference center and cultural attraction.
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