Taylor Swift 'Blank Space' — Oheka Castle, Long Island

Oheka Castle at 135 West Gate Drive in Huntington, Long Island, served as the primary filming location for Taylor Swift's 'Blank Space' music video, shot over three days in September 2014 and released in November of that year. Directed by Joseph Kahn, the video casts Swift as an unhinged socialite descending into jealous rage inside a palatial estate — a satirical commentary on her media portrayal as a serial heartbreaker. The castle's 127-room interior and manicured grounds provided exactly the grandiose, slightly surreal backdrop the concept required: reflecting-pool fountains, formal gardens, gilded rooms, and a white horse ridden at full gallop across the grounds.

Oheka Castle was built between 1914 and 1919 by financier Otto Hermann Kahn at a cost of around $11 million and remains the second-largest private home ever constructed in the United States, comprising over 109,000 square feet. After decades of mixed use — a military retreat, a US Army training ground during the Second World War, a school — the property fell into severe disrepair before being purchased and meticulously restored from the 1980s onwards, reopening as a hotel, wedding venue, and event space.

'Blank Space' became one of the most-viewed videos in YouTube history, bringing renewed international attention to the Long Island estate. Oheka Castle today openly markets its connection to the Swift video, and fans regularly visit to explore the gardens and corridors where the shoot took place. The castle's restoration story is itself remarkable: a gilded-age monument to excess that nearly crumbled away before being brought back, room by painstaking room, to something close to its original extravagance.