East Haddam, CT Photo - Gillette's Estate, East Haddam, Connecticut

Gillette's estate, called Seventh Sister, was built in 1914 on a 184-acre (74 ha) tract on top of the southernmost of a chain of hills known as the Seven Sisters. After Gillette died, with no wife or children, his will precluded the possession of his castle by any "blithering sap-head who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded". Connecticut's government took over the property in 1943, renaming the home as Gillette's Castle and the estate as Gillette Castle State Park. The estate was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: The George F. Landegger Collection of Connecticut Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.