Stokes Castle

Lander County, United States

Exterior only

Visible from the street; the inside is private.

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Stokes Castle is a three-story granite tower near Austin, Nevada, built in 1896–1897 by Anson Phelps Stokes, a mine developer, railroad magnate, and banker, as a summer residence. Designed by Stokes himself and patterned after a tower he admired in Italy's Roman Campagna, the castle exemplifies Mediterranean and Renaissance Revival architecture. Constructed of hand-hewn native granite secured with rock wedging and clay mortar, the tower features a kitchen and dining room on the first floor, a living room on the second, and two bedrooms on the third, each floor equipped with a fireplace. The second and third floors have balconies, and a battlemented terrace crowns the roof. Though Stokes and his family occupied it briefly in 1897 and again in 1898 before selling their mining interests and departing, the castle eventually fell into disrepair until Molly Magee Knudsen, a cousin of Stokes, purchased it in 1956. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, it is now operated by the Austin Historical Society.