A huge mansion once owned by Kellogg's cereal founder has been left frozen in time and filled with black mould after it was left abandoned for years.
The 7,667-square-foot property, which has since been demolished, was built in 1925 and consisted of five bedrooms and six bathrooms, as well as a games room with an antique bar, a rooftop terrace and a deep water dock.
According to Abandoned South East, the home in Dunedin, Florida, was initially built for Edward Frischkorn, a Detroit businessman who was the developer of Dunedin Isles and the Donald Ross golf course.
He then went on to sell the palatial mansion with Medieval Revival architecture during the Great Depression to shoe manufacturing executive Austin Seitz.
Shortly after the purchase, the opulent home fell into foreclosure due to the owner failing to make mortgage payments.
It was then brought by cereal tycoon William Keith Kellogg (W.K Kellogg) in 1934.
At the time, Kellogg's were turning out more than a million boxes per day of Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, and other cereals, with a business representative telling a local paper that they weathered the Depression by increasing their advertising, leading to an increase in sales.
Mr Kellogg was in his 70s by the time he purchased the luxury mansion and only spent two winters there as he owned several properties across the country.
He gave the mansion to the Kellogg Foundation in 1935 and in 1942, the foundation leased the property to the U.S. Marine Corps, and it became part of a base for Marines vehicle testing.
The foundation went on to sell the property in 1946 for $63,500 (£52,798) to William and Caroline Nolan.
The couple only owned the property for a short amount of time as newspaper broker Bill Matthew purchased the property from a real estate broker called Ethel King in 1964.
The businessman lived in the property for four decades and spent his time renovating, decorating and repairing the old mansion.
When he purchased the home, it had saltwater taps and no air conditioning so Mr Matthew spent two years installing a state-of-the-art air conditioning unit which cost the broker around $100,000 (£82,600) a year to run.
As he grew older, the businessman grew more eccentric with his design choices, adding a disco room with a remote controlled ceiling to the property, as well as a colorful mosaic tile work to a number of walls and a jacuzzi in the garden.
In 2003, James Nielsen, an ophthalmologist (eye doctor), purchased the home from Mr Matthew’s estate.
Sadly, the doctor passed away shortly after the purchase and his widow asked the Dunedin City Commission to vote against designating the home as historic as it would negatively affect its value.
After sitting on the market for number of years, the abandoned waterfront home was purchased last year for $4m (£3,300) and later demolished due to structural issues, asbestos and black mould.
According to the Tampa Bay Times, the current owners are lawyer Christa Carpenter and her husband David Wenk, a doctor.
When asked about the demolition work, Mrs Carpenter said: "If it was going to be saved that needed to start 50 years ago.
"It’s got asbestos, structural issues. It would take a million, two million. It’s an unfortunate situation."
The couple hope to build a new home on the site and in an effort to keep the history of the property alive, the University of South Florida's digital heritage team created a virtual reality walking tour of the home.
The event, which took place in September 2022, showed what the mansion looked like through the years – from 1926 to 1934 to 2016.
