Joseph Henry House

The Joseph Henry House is a historic building located on the campus of Princeton University in Princeton, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Joseph Henry, a prominent American physicist who worked in electromagnetics, designed the house in 1836 and lived there from its completion in 1838 until taking a position as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. The construction of the house was part the compensation offered to the young physicist as part of the University's attempt to hire him away from the Albany Academy in an attempt to raise Princeton's profile. After Henry's departure, the house served as the official housing of the Dean of the College, the University's senior undergraduate academic officer, from 1909 to 1961. The Henry house has been moved repeatedly throughout its history, first in 1870 to a site behind East College, again in 1925 to the corner of Washington Road and Nassau Street to accommodate the construction of the Princeton University Chapel, and finally in 1946 to its present location. The Henry house now stands along the northern edge of the University's campus adjacent to Chancellor Green and serves the home of Princeton's Adlinger Center for the Humanities. The house was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1965.