1760 Peter Harrison-designed mansion inside Harvard's Adams House — the residence where General John Burgoyne was held after Saratoga.
10 Linden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Active Harvard Faculty Dean residence within Adams House; not open to the public. Exterior viewable from Linden Street.
Access
Limited Access
Private residence enclosed within Adams House courtyard; exterior glimpse only from public sidewalk.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1760 · Pre-Revolutionary 'Bishop's Palace' · Confinement site of British General John Burgoyne (1777–78) · Only pre-Revolutionary mansion in Harvard Square · Enclosed within Harvard's Adams House since 1928
Apthorp House was built in 1760 for the Reverend East Apthorp, the first rector of the newly established Christ Church Cambridge. The Georgian mansion was designed by (or strongly associated with) Peter Harrison, the same architect responsible for Christ Church itself, and its unusual scale and ornamentation in then-rural Cambridge prompted local Patriots to nickname it 'the Bishop's Palace' — a sneering reference to Apthorp's perceived ambition to become the first Anglican Bishop of Cambridge.
During the Revolutionary War, the house was confiscated from its then-Loyalist owners. After British General John 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne surrendered his army at the Battle of Saratoga in October 1777, he was paroled and held at Apthorp House during his confinement in Cambridge in 1777–78.
In 1928 Harvard purchased the property and enclosed it within the newly constructed Adams House — a residential 'House' for upperclassmen. The mansion sits within the Adams House courtyard at 10 Linden Street and now serves as the residence of the Adams House Faculty Deans (formerly called House Masters). It is the only pre-Revolutionary mansion still standing in the Harvard Square area and is a contributing structure to the Old Cambridge Historic District.
Sources
The defining Apthorp House ghost report comes from Hannah L. Bouldin, a Harvard student who lived in the Faculty Master's quarters in the mid-1980s. She told the Harvard Crimson in 1986, 'I hear them rumbling about all the time' — a reference to a generalized Revolutionary War-era presence in the building. The Harvard Gazette's 2014 ghost feature attributes the most named spirit to General John 'Gentleman Johnny' Burgoyne himself, who was held at Apthorp during his post-Saratoga parole in 1777–78.
The Crimson's 2014 'Cribs: Apthorp House' feature describes the building's interior as architecturally and atmospherically distinct from the surrounding Adams House — preserved Georgian woodwork, period furnishings, and a self-contained sense of being walled off in time within the surrounding undergraduate residential complex. The lore is grounded in the genuinely unusual fact of an intact 1760 mansion enclosed within a 1928 college dormitory.
No specific recurring named ghost story (e.g., a fixed apparition, a documented haunting episode beyond the rumbling) has emerged from the building beyond the Bouldin quote and the general Burgoyne association.
Notable Entities
Catch a glimpse of the 1760 Apthorp House, the Georgian mansion that now serves as the Faculty Dean's residence inside Harvard's Adams House. The building is the only pre-Revolutionary mansion still standing in Harvard Square and is enclosed within the Adams House courtyard.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Cambridge, MA
Wadsworth House was built in 1726 as the residence for Harvard president Benjamin Wadsworth and was used as a president's home until 1849. It is Harvard's second-oldest surviving building and briefly served as George Washington's headquarters in July 1775 before he moved to the larger Vassall House (today's Longfellow House). In 2016, Harvard installed a plaque at the building memorializing four enslaved people — Titus, Venus, Juba, and Bilhah — who lived and labored there.
Worcester, MA
Higgins House was built in the early 1920s by industrialist Aldus C. Higgins and his wife Mary (May) Higgins as a 29-room Tudor Revival mansion designed by architect Grosvenor Atterbury and modeled on the c. 1525 Compton Wynyates Castle in Warwickshire, England. The Higgins family lived in the home until donating it to Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1971; it now houses WPI's Office of Alumni Relations.
Cambridge, MA
The Hooper-Lee-Nichols House was built around 1685 for Richard Hooper and is the second-oldest surviving residence in Cambridge. The building has passed through several families — Hooper, Lee, and Nichols — and is now the headquarters of History Cambridge (formerly the Cambridge Historical Society). It sits on Brattle Street's historic 'Tory Row.'