Watertown's 1878 Paddock Mansion museum, where Olive Paddock's spirit is said to keep watch
228 Washington Street, Watertown, NY 13601
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Museum admission for daytime visits; ticketed paranormal investigation events are priced separately. Confirm current rates with the Jefferson County Historical Society.
Access
Limited Access
Victorian house museum with original staircases, a high basement, and a corner tower; multiple levels.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1878 · Stick/Eastlake Victorian Architecture · Jefferson County Historical Society · National Register of Historic Places
Edwin L. Paddock was a Watertown banker who, with his wife Olive, built one of the city's most elaborate Victorian houses on Washington Street. Construction ran from 1876 to 1878 to a design by architect John Hose, who combined Stick and Eastlake detailing, turned millwork, chamfered brackets, and a three-story tower on the southeast corner, on a brick structure set over a high basement. The Paddocks had no children and lived in the house together.
Olive Paddock outlived her husband and, on her death in 1922, bequeathed the mansion to the Jefferson County Historical Society to be used as a museum. The society opened it to the public in 1924, and the house has served as its headquarters and museum ever since. The collection covers the history of Jefferson County and the North Country, and the building itself is among the best-preserved Victorian houses in the region.
The Paddock Mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Its century of continuous use as a museum, in a house that two people occupied alone for decades and that one of them deliberately left to the public, is the backdrop for the ghost story now most associated with the place: the lingering presence of Olive Paddock.
Sources
The mansion's haunting centers entirely on Olive Paddock, the woman who lived in the house for decades and willed it to the historical society. Staff describe lights found switched on after the museum has closed and everyone has left, and report footsteps and faint whispers in the building late at night. The most-repeated sighting is of a woman in a Victorian dress standing at a second-floor window, often the window of what was Olive's bedroom, who then appears to move to another room and disappear.
Other accounts place her figure at the back of the building near her former bedroom, looking out through the gift-shop window, and walking in the garden she is said to have loved. A persistent detail in local tellings has her associated with the thirteenth step of the main staircase. The reports are domestic and watchful in tone rather than threatening, in keeping with a woman said to be looking after the house she gave away.
The Jefferson County Historical Society has embraced the tradition, hosting ticketed evening paranormal investigations with a local group and discussing the staff's own experiences in regional coverage. The Paddock Mansion appears on the Haunted History Trail of New York State and on North Country most-haunted features, making it one of Watertown's better-known haunted sites.
Notable Entities
Tour the 1878 Paddock Mansion, now the Jefferson County Historical Society Museum. The Stick/Eastlake-style house keeps its original millwork, tower, and period rooms, including the second-floor bedroom where Olive Paddock is most often said to appear.
The historical society hosts ticketed evening paranormal investigations in the mansion, run with a local paranormal group, focused on the rooms tied to Olive Paddock. Dates are announced on the society's site and social channels.
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