In 1853, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher purchased Blossom Hill located in the Berkshire Mountains just outside of Lenox, Massachusetts, where the Cranwell Mansion now stands. He loved the views from the top of the hillside and it is from this vantage point that he proclaimed, “From here I can see the very hills of Heaven”. He was active in the women’s suffrage and the anti-slavery movements and had presidential ambitions, which were ended by a scandalous affair, and so, it was left for his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe to claim fame through her anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. General John Rathbone purchased the 380 acre property from Beecher in 1869 and constructed a new home called Wyndhurst, enormous by any standards of the day and ironically referred to as a “cottage.” At the same time, on the backside of the hill, United States Naval Captain John Barnes, Flag Officer of the North Atlantic Fleet during the Civil War, erected Coldbrooke, now known as Beecher’s Cottage and part of the Cranwell property. John Sloane, a relative of the Vanderbilts and co-owner of the famous furniture firm, W & J Sloane, became the next owner of the property when he built his “cottage” in 1894. After tearing down Rathbone’s Wyndhurst and Beecher’s farmhouse, Sloane constructed another Wyndhurst, which rivaled the enormity and elegance of the first.He also commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who created New York’s Central Park and the Boston area’s Emerald Necklace, to design the grounds. It is this new Wyndhurst that stands on the hill today. The property was briefly run as the Berkshire Hunt and Country Club until purchased by Edward Cranwell in 1930 who deeded the estate to the Society of Jesus of New England in 1939, to be turned into a private school for boys. After prospering for many years, the school slipped into decline, closing its doors in 1975. Today Cranwell, with much of its original grandeur restored, is a premier four-season resort and was the site of a two day iRobot management retreat which I am attending.