Former IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson Jr. owned this house when he passed away in 1993. He grew IBM from a medium-sized business to one of the dozen largest industrial corporations in the world. When Watson became CEO in 1956, IBM employed 72,500 people and had a gross income of $892 million. When he stepped down in 1971, employees numbered more than 270,000 and gross revenue was $8.3 billion. Fortune magazine once called him "the greatest capitalist who ever lived." Watson was also national president of the Boy Scouts of America (1964 to 1968) and U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (1979 to 1981). In 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.