A mansion built a century ago in the wilderness by one of the richest industrialists of America's Gilded Age is going on the auction block, both in the Colorado Rockies and on the Internet.
The 21,000-square-foot, Tudor-style Redstone Castle was built in 1897 for coal and steel magnate John Cleveland Osgood. The Redstone Castle, a Tudor-style estate with 42 rooms and antique details from Tiffany lamps to Gustav Stickley woodwork, sits on 150 riverfront acres about 185 miles west of Denver.
The 16-bedroom, 11-bath mansion sits in the Crystal River Valley, about an hour's drive from the modern mansions of Aspen. Built by Italian stone carvers with the local sandstone that gave the town its name, the red-roofed manor last sold for $6.3 million in 2000. The buyer then was a partnership, seven of whose members were indicted last year.
On Saturday, the Internal Revenue Service will sell the landmark to help repay victims of a 21st-century investment scheme. The IRS alleges that the group took $56 million from more than 1,000 investors in the USA and abroad by pledging risk-free returns of up to 400% a year. The IRS seized the property because the partners, who are scheduled for trial in federal court in Denver in September, allegedly bought it with early profits.
Local legend says the Ute tribe put a curse on this valley after white settlers pushed them out. Does the hex reside in Osgood's dream castle? One of the partners in the alleged fraud, who moved into the mansion in 2000 and threw a big party for the town, died last summer.
Source: USA Today (3-16-05)
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