Place in Mind Hospitality Group Launches With The Seminary in Vermont

Designers Rafe Churchill and Casey Sunderland have launched a new hospitality group called Place in Mind, dedicated to acquiring and restoring architecturally significant hotels and inns, as first reported by Surface. Its flagship property, The Seminary in Bennington, Vermont, sits near Bennington and Williams Colleges and comprises more than five guest rooms, an expansive attic suite and common spaces with ten foot ceilings, dressed in interiors by Churchill's architecture and design firm Hendricks Churchill.

Built in 1829 as part of an all boys boarding school before serving as a country club, a writers retreat and finally a private residence, the property gave Churchill a chance to pursue creative freedom outside the constraints of client work. He bought The Seminary roughly eighteen months ago as his studio scaled back its architectural projects, restoring its original electrical and plumbing systems and rebuilding a 21 foot bell tower that had been removed from the property more than a century earlier.

Churchill and Sunderland, Hendricks Churchill's managing director, describe Place in Mind as a brand built to save historic buildings and revive inns that have lost their way, with The Seminary serving as proof of concept. "The Seminary is our proof of concept," Churchill said, describing the property as the foundation the wider brand needed before it could grow.

The group has already expanded to a second property nearby, The Walloomsac Inn, an 1771 building once visited by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, which had sat largely abandoned since the 1990s before Sunderland tracked down its owners. Dozens of its rooms will be transformed into 40 guest accommodations alongside a restaurant, spa and gym, with select furnishings already finding their way into The Seminary.

Beyond acquiring properties outright, Place in Mind also plans to partner with existing inn owners on design, branding and marketing, letting owners keep operating their properties under its programming. More on the group is available through Place in Mind.