Documentary filmed at Gingerbread Castle

HAMBURG — “I can’t tell you how many people stop by and take pictures every day,” Pat Barton said during an on-camera interview this past Sunday at the Gingerbread Castle. He didn’t need to: in the 20 minutes he was being interviewed, six different cars stopped at the property to take photographs on the sunny Sunday afternoon.

Barton, a part-owner of the historic property, was being interviewed by Erik Hummel and Brandon Stauffer, who are filming for an upcoming documentary that addresses the “past, present and future states of abandoned and derelict buildings,” according to Hummel.

Former “urban explorers” out of the Allentown area of Pennsylvania, Hummel and Stauffer were intrigued by the Gingerbread Castle property when it showed up on Preservation NJ’s annual top-ten list of the most endangered historic sites in New Jersey, Hummel said during a recent phone interview. The list was a perfect tool, he said, because of the pair's interest in abandoned landmarks and properties of historic significance. When they found an abandoned theme park that fell into their working radius, they contacted the Borough of Hamburg to find out if they would be allowed to film and were connected with Borough Councilman and historic preservation commission founder Dan Barr.

“(Gingerbread Castle) became our town identity,” Barr told them in a separately filmed interview inside the turret of that very castle. He went on to explain that Hamburg was nicknamed “The Children’s Town” because of the property and that several of the borough’s street names were of fairytale origin — Prince St., King Cole Road and Wishing Well Road, to name a few.

Barr also told the duo that it is “heartbreaking” to see the property in its current condition, as “it’s a nostalgic place for a lot of us.” One of his most vivid memories of his trips to the castle, he said, was the smell of the homemade gingerbread men — that and the nightmares he got as a child from the frightening fairytales.

As to the future of the site, Barr told the documentarians that although he doesn’t feel it will ever be the attraction it was, he believes “it can still be an attraction of some kind.”

In his later interview, property owner Pat Barton took this a step further, saying that he intends on working “step by step” to reopen the castle one piece at a time. Step one, he said, would be to clean up and open “Castle Park,” the grounds right off of Gingerbread Castle Road. After that, he would look into getting a permit to open up the castle itself “once a month for a guided tour.” The latter idea is far off, Barton admits, because the building is in such a state of disrepair that it would need a great deal of work before it would meet the necessary safety standards.

After all the interviews were finished, filmmaker Brandon Stauffer acknowledged that “there’s definitely an appeal” to the property and was glad he and Hummel chose it as one of their 30 or so sites. Now, they need to trim their 60-plus hours of raw footage down into a feature length film and hope for commercial distribution: “We’re not necessarily expecting it, but we’re exploring every option,”

Hummel said. Either way, Barton and Barr are happy to get the exposure: “You get enough publicity, people start to listen,” Barr said.

— By Scott Baker