Kingfisher Tower

Sitting in the midst of the Glimmerglass Historic District on Otsego Lake is a mini-castle built by the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

Rising from the edge of the lake, the “Kingfisher Tower” was built by Edward S. Clark around 1876 with the intention of making the lake more aesthetically pleasing for the public. Constructed in the Gothic Revival style, Clark’s folly measures 60 feet in height and was designed in conjunction with American architect Henry J. Hardenbergh, with whom Clark and his eponymous Singer Sewing Machine-cofounder Isaac Meritt Singer had previously worked to create The Dakota in New York City. 

The structure was built of stone from the shores of Otsego Lake, and in its earliest days boasted a drawbridge and portcullis made of solid oak. Though this feature has been lost to time, the rest of Kingfisher Tower remains as it ever was. Its diminutive base measures only 20 square feet in size, with the main floor seeming to float just five feet above the lake’s surface. Ten feet above that sits the tower’s first platform, from which rises a smaller, pyramid-shaped roof with a window on each side.  All throughout the castle, the windows are decorated with stained glass bearing a heraldic shield at their center.

The tower is located about three miles north on the east side of Otsego Lake at Point Judith and can only be reached by boat, as it is hidden in a forest with a barbed-wire fence. For those less drawn to wooded paths and prohibitive fences, a view of the folly can be enjoyed from land at Lakefront Park, or aboard local boat tours.