Flashback

We are parked at the Cranwell Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts (map). We arrived here yesterday afternoon after a lovely drive through lots of fall color. We parked just to walk around, but when we explained to the front desk the reason for our visit, they invited us to park in this lower lot overnight.

That reason would be to visit a cherished part of my past. While this property, with its Tudor mansion, myriad outbuildings, and nearly 400 acres of woods, trails, and 18-hole golf course has a long and storied history dating back over a century and a half, it was a preparatory school for boys operated by the Jesuits from 1939 to 1975, the Cranwell School. While I did not attend this school as a student, I did spend six summers here at a summer camp that the Jesuits operated on the property, Camp Cranwell. My last summer here was the year it closed, 34 years ago -- it has now been a resort for nearly as long as it was a school.

It's amazing to me how much of the campus is just the same as the day I left. I lived in three different buildings over the years that I was here, and all three are still here, now converted to luxury hotel rooms. The building that housed the camp administration, used for classrooms during the school year, is also still here, also converted to luxury hotel rooms, along with one of the original houses on the site that, in my day, contained the infirmary among other things, and I spent more than a night there myself.

As long as we were here and well parked for the night, we signed up for a pair of spa day packages yesterday, including a 50-minute massage and a pass for the indoor pool and other facilities. We also had a very nice dinner at the restaurant in the mansion, together making this one of the most expensive "free" parking spaces we've ever had. We were the only guests in the restaurant --most of the guests in the resort last night are attending a conference and so dined in the ballroom, which was the dining hall in my camp days.

It has been a real trip down memory lane, and I am glad we had the chance to stop. We need to be rolling again shortly -- our parking invitation was for one night only -- and we are waiting for a break in the rain. Our goal is the Wal-Mart or Elks lodge in Pittsfield, just a few miles from here, as any break in this rain is likely to be short-lived.

And now for a brief diversion from our regular content here -- most of our readers can skip the rest of this post.

As I have written here before, for reasons known only to the search-algorithm gurus at Google, this blog gets indexed fairly highly in search results. And so I can expect that some number of people will land on this post while searching for memories of Cranwell Preparatory School or Camp Cranwell, and for them I offer the following photos. (If you've arrived here looking for information about the resort, I can't comment on the guest rooms -- although I expect them to be commensurate with the four-diamond rating -- but the restaurant was excellent, the spa is first-rate, and my memories of the golf course, which is much the same today, is that it was a challenging and beautiful course. And it's hard to beat the raw beauty of the campus with its immense grounds.) Click on any photo for a full-size version.

Here is what the mansion looks like today (sorry, this is the most that would fit on my mediocre cell-phone camera, and today is not the best lighting). This is the view from the campus side, and the image at the top of this post is the "front" or street side. When I was here it was known as "Cranwell Hall," the resort calls it simply "the mansion" and it contains guest rooms on the upper floors, and restaurants, meeting facilities, and public rooms on the first floor:



Most Cranwell alums will recognize the well, still here:



My first year, I lived in one of these two buildings, now containing guest rooms. This is a view from the rear, I believe the one on the right was "Loyola" back then. I lived in one of the upstairs rooms with the dorm windows in the building on the left, whose name I have forgotten but I believe it began with a "B":



My second year and one other year I lived in this building, whose name I have also forgotten (but "Helliwel" sticks in my mind). It is now called the Olmsted "cottage" after Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed the grounds (along with the nation's capital as well as my other alma mater, Stanford). The addition of the port-cochere in the front makes it a bit difficult to recognize. This building also now houses the main registration desk:



Here is the building that was the carriage house for the mansion, and was classrooms in my day, also housing the camp administration. Today it houses guest rooms and is known as the Carriage House:



I lived in this building two years, know then as "Founders Hall." Today it retains some of that name, being known as "Founders Cottage" and houses guest rooms and a small lounge. The cornerstone engraved "1963" is still in place:



This building, now known as the Beecher Cottage and housing guest rooms, was faculty residences and other facilities, and I remember spending a couple of nights there in the infirmary, which was on the top floor and was the only thing the camp used in the building:



We seldom used most of the academic buildings at the camp, but I remember one which had, among other things, the science labs, where we had a couple of workshops. I thought the building had been razed, until I realized it was still there, but with a berm of earth piled against it on three sides. This was the only identifiable part of the building, now used as a maintenance shop, that I could capture -- the berm is visible to the left:



I don't remember what this building was, but it was here 35 years ago. Today it is the resort administration:



Lastly, this concrete pedestal is still here in the center of campus. Today there is a gazebo next to it. I remember it as having a bird bath or some such on top:



Fans of the post-modern Pierce Chapel will be sorry to learn that it was razed many years ago, after an unsuccessful attempt to use it as an opera house.