Shot Here · STOP 02 · Beacon Hill
Thomas Crown came home to a house Bulfinch built for a future mayor.
Thomas Crown's Boston house is real, on Mount Vernon Street on Beacon Hill. Charles Bulfinch designed it in 1801 for Harrison Gray Otis, who later became the city's third mayor. Many of the movie's rooms were shot at a Hollywood studio, so the part worth seeing is the part you can see from the sidewalk: a freestanding mansion on a street where everything else stands shoulder to shoulder.
This is stop 2 of Shot Here. Walk it free in the app.
The plate
Collected on site
85 Mount Vernon Street
Directions
Bulfinch drew three houses for Otis. The first, from 1796, is at 141 Cambridge Street, the street you just left. The third, from 1806, is 45 Beacon, facing the Common - you'll pass across from it on the way to stop 7.
More footnotes on the story card, in the app.
Near Charles/MGH · Near Park Street · Near Bowdoin
Sources (8)
- Reel BostonTy Burr, The Boston Globe · 2005-02-27
- America's birthplace on the silver screen: movies made in BostonEmily Beatty, The Suffolk Journal (Suffolk University student newspaper) · 2022-02-22
- The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) - AFI Catalog of Feature FilmsAmerican Film Institute · accessed 2026-10-11
- The Thomas Crown Affair (production article)American Cinematographer, October 1968 · 1968-10
- Otis HouseHistoric New England · accessed 2026-10-11
- Beacon Hill (SAH Archipedia, Buildings of the United States)Society of Architectural Historians / University of Virginia Press · accessed 2026-10-11
- Second Harrison Gray Otis House (1802)When and Where in Boston (curated almanac; cites Keith N. Morgan, the Southworths, Charles Bahne) · accessed 2026-10-11
- The Thomas Crown Affair is filmed in BostonWhen and Where in Boston (citing Ryan Walsh and Paul Sherman) · accessed 2026-10-11