Christ Church and Old Burying Ground - Colonial Corner

Christ Church and Old Burying Ground - Colonial Corner

Photo: Daderot, CC0 (cropped)

A stop on Harvard Yard and Cambridge, a free self-guided tour.

Two of Cambridge's oldest landmarks sit side by side here. The Old Burying Ground opened in 1635, a year before Harvard was founded. Among its old slate stones lie Henry Dunster, Harvard's first president, and several of his successors. It also holds the gravestone of Cicely, the enslaved servant of a Harvard tutor, described as the oldest surviving gravestone of a Black person in the Americas. A sign on the fence remembers Cato Stedman and Neptune Frost, Black soldiers of the Continental Army.

Next door, Christ Church was designed by Peter Harrison, often called the first formally trained architect in the colonies, and completed around 1761. It closed during the Revolution, and its organ was melted down for bullets. George and Martha Washington later attended a prayer service here. In 1967, after being refused space at Harvard, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out against the Vietnam War here.

Harvard Square, where you began, is a two-minute walk south.

Getting here: Walk south along Garden Street to the gray wooden church and the old graveyard beside it at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue.

Did you know?: As a Harvard student, Theodore Roosevelt taught Sunday school at Christ Church for more than three years.

Photo op: From the Garden Street sidewalk, frame the old headstones in the foreground with the church's square tower behind them.

More on Wikipedia: Old Burying Ground · Christ Church · Henry Dunster

Stops on this tour

  1. Harvard Square - Crossroads of Cambridge
  2. Johnston Gate - Harvard's Front Door
  3. Massachusetts Hall - Harvard's Oldest Building
  4. John Harvard Statue - The Statue of Three Lies
  5. Widener Library - A Memorial in Books
  6. Memorial Church - A Steeple for the Fallen
  7. Sever Hall - Whispers in the Brick
  8. Harvard Art Museums - Three Museums Under Glass
  9. Memorial Hall - Gothic Tribute to the Union
  10. Cambridge Common - Where Washington Took Command
  11. Christ Church and Old Burying Ground - Colonial Corner