Christ Church

Cambridge’s oldest church was designed in 1761 by America’s first formally trained architect, Peter Harrison (who also did King’s Chapel in Boston). Washington’s troops used it as a barracks after its Tory congregation fled. Christ Church’s favorite son is Teddy Roosevelt, who taught Sunday school here when he was a student at Harvard. An interesting addendum to that story is that the future president was actually discharged because he refused to convert to Episcopalian but chose to remain a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. Adjacent to the church, the Old Burying Ground is a tranquil revolutionary-era cemetery, where Harvard’s first eight presidents are buried.