By Neil Turitz • Photographs by Abigail Fenton

It is one thing to appreciate beauty, but it is another entirely to surround yourself with it. There is something to be said for those who can accomplish this—even here in the Berkshires, where we are immersed in the natural world.

There is definitely something to be said for Robert Hartwell. When the former Broadway dancer-actor and current entrepreneur bought the 200-year-old house on the Hill in Great Barrington on Juneteenth 2020, it was a desiccated husk that had sat unoccupied for a decade. There was mold, rot, and a veritable river coming through the basement from the hill above. It took two years to rebuild the interior—a frustrating, chaotic, somewhat devastating process captured by Hartwell’s reality TV show, Breaking New Ground, currently streaming on MAX (and coming soon to OWN and HGTV).

Over the course of the show’s six episodes, Hartwell walks viewers through the strenuous renovations, his exasperation on display, while weaving his own heritage into the narrative. The house spoke to him when he saw it online, partly because Black servants had lived there. For someone who is descended from slaves, that story is immensely powerful.

Apply enough stress to coal and it becomes a diamond. Similarly, the house on Castle Street has become its own jewel, one befitting a man whose life is dedicated to the pursuit of beauty. “From the garments you wear to the colors in your home, what you surround yourself with will speak to your mind,” Hartwell said. “It’s a level of care that I have with protecting my future by being fully alive in my present.”

The house’s interior reflects his passion in its confluence of colors and styles. “Everything had to be about the feeling of joy,” he said. Thinking of the various items and objects he has amassed, he laughed and said, “It makes for fun storytelling as well. Someone sees something and says, ‘Oh, I love this piece,’ and it’s like, ‘That’s a $10 thing I found at the flea market. But it is sitting on that gorgeous custom crafted table.’”

Hartwell fell deeply in love with the creative process while working with New York–based interior designer Courtney McLeod. “The design was the therapeutic part,” he explained. As local contractor John O’Brien found more problems with the house and the projected budget became a fiction beset with increasing numbers, Hartwell found solace in the details.

He also became a collector of art, specializing in Black artists. Two Megan Lewis pieces came to him from a collector friend in Los Angeles, and numerous other works dot the walls and provide even more brightness to the space, belying the house’s dark history. “Seeing these columns felt familiar and took me back to the homes I would see when I was a kid growing up in [Raleigh, N.C.], not knowing my family’s American story began just one state over in Virginia,” he said. “There were nearly 450,000 enslaved Black people in Virginia when my current home in Great Barrington was being built in 1820.”

Historian Kendra Field, who edited a biography of the Berkshires’ own W.E.B. Du Bois, worked with Hartwell and appeared on the show to help him learn about the house’s history, and his own.

“It’s part of what Robert was grappling with,” she explained from her office at Tufts University. “Precisely, the relationship between slavery and this place. It’s not as direct a line as it would be in Virginia; it’s maybe a generation removed. However, the house he purchased was owned by a family that was integral to the textile industry that was based on Southern slave-produced cotton.”

The more Hartwell learned about his own family, however, the more of a connection he felt to his new house. “I felt less alone,” he said. “Like [ancestors] were with me and guiding and protecting me.”

One of the show’s most emotional sequences involved the destruction of the house’s rear staircase, which the servants had to use. The decision to remove it was one of the first Hartwell made.

“I knew I didn’t want to see them, and didn’t want to experience them in my home,” he said. “One of the most cathartic days for me was taking a sledgehammer to those steps. That felt good.”

With the help of Massachusetts architect Alan Mayer, it also allowed for the creation of a dance studio as well as an enormous kitchen—a luxury for a man who doesn’t cook.

Now that he’s a full-time Berkshires resident, Hartwell is joining the community. Aside from using his dance studio for events like charity dinners, the dancer has been to Jacob’s Pillow, as well as Tanglewood, The Clark, and MASS MoCA. He hikes Monument Mountain at least twice a week, visits the small businesses on Railroad Street, paddleboards on the local lakes, and is a regular at the Great Barrington Farmers Market.

“What I love about the community here, especially the queer community, is that unlike New York City, where there’s so much to do all the time, here you have to be so intentional,” he said. “I love that because when I moved here, I was really seeking a ‘less is more’ vibe.”

After enduring a Berkshires winter and almost missing the summer entirely because of his show, he’s already excited for next year. “Because I was traveling to promote Breaking New Ground in June and July, I didn’t get the Berkshires summer I so badly wanted,” he said. “I’m looking forward to 2025.”