Glen Eyrie Castle
Glen Eyrie Castle
Unique Tudor Revival estate of Colorado Springs' founder is now The Navigators' ministry headquarters
Glen Eyrie Castle
✟ Christian (Protestant evangelical) | Colorado Springs, CO
Nestled in a narrow valley (or “park”) among the red rock formations north of Garden of the Gods, Glen Eyrie Castle is an impressive stone manor built in the Tudor Revival style. Completed in 1904, it served as the home of General William Jackson Palmer, a Brigadier General in the Union Army during the Civil War, president of The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, and founder of Colorado Springs.
The castle’s predecessor was a much smaller, though still luxurious, clapboard home, where General Palmer and his wife, Mary “Queen” Mellen Palmer, lived with their three daughters. Shortly after Queen Palmer’s death in 1894 (age 44), General Palmer commissioned the design and construction of the castle. As Susan Fletcher and Amy Burch write in The Glen Eyrie Story, “The stunning transformation of Glen Eyrie turned the estate into one of the most spectacular homes in the West” (p.40).
The exterior consists of stone quarried from a local canyon; the windows and doors are carved out of Indiana limestone. Upon entry, General Palmer’s guests were welcomed into a large hall with heads of big game and impressive paintings upon the walls. The first floor featured a drawing room, dining room, library, and General Palmer’s personal den. The basement boasted a bowling alley, billiard room, and steam room with white tile and marble. The castle included “cutting-edge technology of the day, including a central vacuum, elevator, weather register, and a fire hose that ran the three stories of the house” (p.41). It was one of the first homes in Colorado to have electricity, generated by a small coal-fired power plant in the valley, built by General Palmer specifically for that purpose. Tourists flocked to the site to glimpse the beautiful exterior and grounds.
After General Palmer passed away in 1909, the castle changed ownership several times. In 1938, it was purchased by George and Susan Strake of Houston, Texas, owners of Strake Petroleum. The Strakes were devout Catholics and deeply invested in religious causes. In 1946, they hosted the papal secretary Msgr. Giovanni Montini—the future Pope Paul VI—at Glen Eyrie.
After a catastrophic flood in the valley, the Strakes listed the estate for sale at $500,000. The Navigators, an evangelism and discipleship ministry founded in California, and the Reverend Billy Graham expressed interest in purchasing the property together, and the Strakes, to facilitate ministry ownership, reduced the asking price to $300,000. In the end, Graham decided that owning the property would distract from his evangelistic work, and The Navigators purchased it in 1953.
Today, Glen Eyrie serves as the headquarters of The Navigators and the locus of its conference and retreat ministry, where it hosts overnight guests, group retreats, weddings, conferences, summer camps, as well as teas and historical tours. The Great Hall, originally known as the Book Hall, welcomes guests at Christmastime for the annual Madrigal Banquet, a 16th-century-style evening of food and spectacular music, dancing, and entertainment from a talented troupe of performers.
Sources: Susan Fletcher & Amy Burch, The Glen Eyrie Story (2021) | Glen Eyrie (The Navigators) | Colorado Encyclopedia
» Part of the “Holy Places” series at Blessings of Liberty «