The first floor would house a reception and Director’s room, general office with a walk-in vault, reception room, sitting room, a butler’s pantry, a dining room, employee lavatory, physician office, pharmacy, clerk’s office plus three additional offices. The first-floor annex would include a dining room. The second floor would include a reading room, library, twelve apartments, a school room, coat and hat room, men’s water closet and women’s lavatory. The second-floor annex would hold a dormitory, a locker room, and a linen room.
A mezzanine level was to provide two bathrooms with three bathtubs. The third and fourth floors would remain unfinished. The third floor would contain twelve rooms and the fourth floor was designed to have six rooms.
The basement would include a play room, water closet (long urinal and nine toilets), laundry, lavatory with foot bath, shower room and plunge bath, hall, kitchen, pantry, furnace room, fuel storage room, and a water closet with two toilets. The basement annex would hold a bakery, fuel storage room, kitchen, pantry, storeroom, and the employee’s laundry and lavatory.
At its peak the Preston School of Industry encompassed 1,000 acres, 750 of which were farmland. It housed 800 wards, employed a staff of 200, and utilized approximately 50 buildings.
On June 13, 1894, the first wards were accepted at the Preston School of Industry, and the school was proclaimed officially opened on July 1, 1894. The next year, electricity was installed by way of a water wheel powered dynamo, called a Pelton Wheel, for incandescent and arc lights.
The Preston School of Industry remained open until 1960 when new facilities for the school were completed. The building remained vacant and fading into disrepair until September 10, 2001 when The Preston Castle Foundation received a fifty-year lease for the property. The Preston Castle has also been named a California State Historical Landmark (#867) and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NPS-75000422).
The Preston Castle Foundation received ownership of the Preston Castle and surrounding 12.91 acres on November 7, 2014.
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