A five-story fairytale castle on Lake Whitney that easily could be a fixture at Disney World or along the Las Vegas Strip just hit the market for $6.5 million.
The 10-bedroom, 15-bathroom Parsons Castle — complete with a drawbridge and moat — is just north of Waco in the Lake Whitney town of Laguna Park promoted as the Getaway Capital of Texas. Adam Musiel of eXp Realty has the listing.
Built in 2017, the property features 11,500 square feet of living space on a more than 2-acre site. The castle has served as a venue for weddings, corporate events, reunions, graduation celebrations, parties, and other gatherings.
Highlights of the castle include:
- balconies on each floor
- a 3,000-square-foot ballroom
- a bridal suite
- a groom’s dressing room
- gazebos
- a pool and hot tub
- two fireplaces
Hundreds of commenters on Zillow Gone Wild’s Facebook page posted thoughts about Parsons Castle — dubbed "Taj Ma Y’all" by one commenter — that likely would disturb a king or queen.
“This looks like what happens when you start putting all the leftover LEGO pieces on top of each other,” one critic wrote.
“Looks like the home of a Texan oil baron trying to copy Middle Eastern oil barons’ houses, but confused Middle East with Middle Ages halfway through designing it,” another critic observed.
Several kinder, gentler commenters accurately noted that the castle looks like an ideal wedding venue.
Stuart and Rebecca Parsons built Parsons Castle.
“When we bought the property in 2005, we weren’t sure what we were going to build here. But before we even poured the slab, we had already had three or four weddings here. So that’s sort of how this all developed,” Stuart Parsons told Waco TV station KWTX in 2019.
Rebecca Parsons told the Waco Tribune-Herald in 2019 that her husband started drawing up design plans for the castle shortly after they bought the land.
“The castle evolved after years of design changes on the original building drawings,” Rebecca Parsons said. “The original drawings did not look like a castle, but with the help of Sterling Thompson Architects and John Rogers, the structural engineer on the project — who are both from Waco — the castle emerged, to everyone’s delight.”
Workers started pouring the slab for the project in 2009.
“It has been a long project with a lot of changes over the years,” Rebecca Parsons told the Waco newspaper. “But the finished product speaks for itself. It is absolutely amazing and beautiful inside and out, and the perfect venue for a wedding, big event, or big party.”
Parsons Castle sits on the shores of Lake Whitney in Laguna Park.
