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 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.