Looking for a Flat? Brooklyn’s Most Mysterious Castle Has Your Name on It

By Darcy Lawrey (He/Him)

High above the city in the Brooklyn hills sits a castle with a murky past. Originally built as a radar bunker, the strange yellow fortress was last home to an infamous doggy hotel called Woofington’s. And now, if you’ve got around $4 million to spare, it can all be yours. 

Developer and financier Brian Willman, owner of a number of companies in Wellington, purchased the property in 1998 and transformed it from a decommissioned radar bunker into a castle complete with suits of armour and a giant wooden door. 

Three times a year, locals would see swathes of partygoers arriving at the castle by motorbike. Guard dogs keeping watch along the perimeter of the property were also a regular sight, up until the castle suddenly became host to a different sort of dog.

In 2015, 15 years after Willman purchased the castle, he announced the opening of Wellington’s most luxurious doggy day care yet. The sort of place where dogs are shuttled around in a Porche and can watch Harry Potter from the comfort of their fire-side couch, while their owners are out of town. 

That year, in a Stuff video promoting the business, former Woofington’s manager Nicholas Hearfield called the castle a mystery: “a lot of people have been questioning, what is this place?” 

A pretty fitting quote for what was to come.

The same manager would go missing 3 years after, with his body later  found in a search around Porirua. Details of his death were never announced.

One year later, in 2019, armed police carried out a search of the castle. Stuff reported that former Woofington’s employee Robert Shane Bromley had told police that there was something “disturbing” inside the castle’s safe. Police found a homemade firework within the safe, which Bromley faced charges for. However, another employee said that police were really after an “underground bunker”.

The search by armed police wouldn’t be the last time guns were brandished at the castle. In 2020’s COVID lockdown, Woofington’s was burgled by three people with a gun, an incident that culminated in a motorway police chase.

Now, nearly 4 years after Woofington’s abruptly closed its doors to any new canine residents, the building is up for sale. Sotheby’s listing for the property says it offers a “lifestyle like no other”. 

Plenty of rumours have swirled on social media over the years, trying to tie together Woofington’s muddled past. While no secret underground bunker is mentioned in the Sotheby’s listing, it might take the castle’s new owner doing some (literal) digging to find out the truth.