Ravenscry

Ravenscry is a riverfront estate and hunting preserve on the Hudson River in Dutchess County, New York. It was the former residence of Cornelia Delamere Pendergast, great-aunt of Special Agent Pendergast, until her confinement to the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

The estate features a massive stone mansion and summerhouse behind a great lawn, accessed through a beechwood forest. A stone wall encircles the property; from its iron gates, the main drive runs through the forest to the carriage house, where another road leads through the extensive gardens to a stone millhouse on the banks of Dewing Brook, a meandering stream that runs through the estate. The mill itself was converted to a trout farm in the late nineteenth century. An arboretum and series of greenhouses also adorn the property.As part of reacclimating Constance Greene to the outside world, Pendergast began taking her on excursions to Ravenscry, which had sat abandoned since Cornelia Pendergast's commitment and had fallen into great disrepair.After enlisting the services of Effective Engineering Solutions to construct a forensic profile on his brother Diogenes, Pendergast submitted to a psychoanalysis session with EES psychologist Rolf Krasner. During the session, Krasner instructed Pendergast to imagine himself in his favorite place in the world, where he felt the most comfortable and at home; Pendergast vividly pictured Ravenscry in the summer as a twelve-year-old child.