Albert Einstein House

Einstein's Princeton home from 1936 to 1955, still a private residence

Walk along Mercer Street and you will pass, without ceremony, the unassuming white house where Einstein lived for the last twenty years of his life. There is no plaque, no museum, no gift shop. Einstein wanted it that way — he insisted the house never become a shrine — and the Institute for Advanced Study, which still owns it, has honoured the wish.

The proper thing to do is walk past, look briefly at the front porch, and walk on. Photographs from the kerb are fine; do not enter the property. From here it is a fifteen-minute walk to the Institute itself, retracing Einstein's daily commute.

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A story
Einstein bought 112 Mercer Street in 1936, two years after fleeing Nazi Germany, and walked from this house to the Institute for Advanced Study almost every working day for the next nineteen years. He kept the place plain — a modest white clapboard house with a back porch he used as a study in summer — and refused all suggestions that it should be turned into a memorial after his death in 1955. The Institute, which inherited the property, has honoured that wish: the house has been a private residence ever since, currently occupied by an Institute faculty member.