Posted October 2019

Alumni Weekend 2019 brought thousands of Terriers back to campus—and brought a new role for the beloved building long known as the BU Castle.

Thanks to the generosity of donors—including a $2 million gift from BU Trustee Shamim Dahod (CGS’76, CAS’78, MED’87) and her husband, Ashraf Dahod—the Castle is now home to the Dahod Family Alumni Center. If you’re a Terrier, that means it’s home to you.

The Dahod Family Alumni Center occupies the top three floors of the Castle, all extensively renovated and restored. (The garden level houses Fuller’s BU Pub.) With its grand opening this fall, now’s the time to take a look around your new home, and to explore a bit of its storied history.

The Castle was donated to Boston University in 1939 and served as the home of BU presidents until 1967. It has also played a part in countless Scarlet Key ceremonies, weddings, and other events—to say nothing of at least three Hollywood films. But it began its life, more than a century ago, as the home of Boston businessman William Lindsey and his family.

Lords of the manor

The great manor houses of Tudor England inspired William Lindsey’s vision for his grand home. He was fascinated with the medieval style and retired at 46 to write romantic novels and plays, such as The Severed Mantle: A Romance of Medieval Provence and The Red Wine of Roussillon, a blank-verse drama set in France during the Middle Ages. A secret door in his bedroom led to the third-floor study where he wrote.

As part of the restoration, years of soot and grime were removed from the sandstone exterior.
As part of the restoration, years of soot and grime were removed from the sandstone exterior.

The son of a grocer, Lindsey was born in 1858 and grew up in the mill town of Fall River, Massachusetts. After high school, he worked as a cotton yarn salesman—a job that positioned him to make his fortune when he purchased the company that had invented the cotton ammunition belt he later sold to the British Army. In 1884, Lindsey married schoolteacher Annie Sheen, the daughter of an Irish ironworker in Fall River. At some point, Annie dropped the Sheen and became Anne Hawthorne Lindsey, using her Anglo-Scots maternal grandmother’s maiden name.

William Lindsey was the third cousin, once removed, of Fall River’s most notorious resident, Lizzie Borden; Annie was her close friend from childhood. When Borden was accused of killing her father and stepmother with a hatchet, Anne Lindsey held Borden’s hand during the trial and sent candy and flowers to her in jail. A jury acquitted Borden in 1893, and the case was never solved.

The Lindseys’ daughter Leslie, the eldest of their three children, was married in Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street and had her wedding reception at home in the Castle. She and her husband, Stewart Mason, then set sail for their honeymoon on the Lusitania; both drowned when the ship was torpedoed on May 7, 1915.

To honor their daughter’s love of music, the Lindseys created a substantial collection of musical instruments, which William Lindsey bequeathed to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The family also built a chapel at Emmanuel Church in memory of Leslie and Stewart Mason; William Lindsey died in 1922, saddened that he would not live to see the chapel’s completion.

Treasures of the Castle

Designed by the Boston architectural firm Chapman & Frazer and completed in 1915, the mansion cost $500,000 to build—more than $11 million in today’s dollars. It occupied an unusually large lot, three times as wide as a typical Bay State Road townhouse and covering 6,267 feet in all. Before the state created an embankment to accommodate the Esplanade (and later Storrow Drive), the Charles River came nearly to the back of the building.

The building’s style is eclectic, with many Tudor Revival features and some neoclassical touches. William Lindsey brought craftsmen from Europe to carve many of the interior stone and wood details. Hugh Cairns, who sculpted figures for Copley Square’s Trinity Church, carved the elaborate stone decorations on the exterior.

Inside, a visitor first encounters the Great Hall, where hand-carved oak and mahogany panels, along with a split-run staircase and a massive hooded fireplace, create a medieval mood. The Lindsey coat of arms above the fireplace and the room’s Oriental rug are original to the house. According to tradition, the stained-glass chandelier once hung in England’s Arundel Castle; it bears the motto Nil desperandum (Never despair) and, between the panes, gilt figures of crusaders leaning on their swords.

The restoration of the Library highlights the room's elaborate plasterwork and meticulously crafted windows.
The restoration of the Library highlights the room’s elaborate plasterwork and meticulously crafted windows.

To the right of the Great Hall, overlooking the Charles, is the Library. Its classical columns and pilasters, modillioned cornice, and plaster frieze of entwined roses, pomegranates, and thistles provide a counterpoint to the medieval motif. Swans in the crest over the fireplace and in the ceiling design evoke Anne Lindsey’s ancestral line.

The Dining Room, directly across the Great Hall from the Library, is furnished in Georgian Revival style. Its dark paneling sets off the green marble fireplace, framed by fluted engaged columns. Opposite the fireplace hangs a tapestry of French origin. Garlands of fruit and flowers on the walls and ceiling feature the Tudor rose, a centuries-old symbol of that British royal line.

Just outside the entrance to the Dining Room stands an Italian Renaissance–style bronze church door, one of many objects that William Lindsey brought home to the Castle from his travels in Europe. The door’s panels depict the Three Graces and the Temptation of Eve. Bearing the date MDLXXX (1580), the door was reputed to be the work of Benvenuto Cellini, but it was more likely cast in a Florentine workshop shortly before Lindsey acquired it.

The restored Music Room provides an elegant setting for meals.
The restored Music Room provides an elegant setting for meals.

To the left of the bronze door, toward the front of the house, is the entrance to the elegant Music Room. Its light walls and large windows, its graceful columns, and the garlanded mirror above the mantel typify the Georgian Revival style.

The second and third floors hold the offices of the Alumni Relations staff—conveniently nearby for visiting Terriers.

Sustaining the Castle’s legacy

The extensive renovation of this historic building would not have been possible without the generous support of Boston University donors. As the University seeks to maintain this unique property—and ensure that future alumni will have a welcoming home whenever they return to campus—it continues to rely on the generosity of BU alumni, families, and friends. Contributions of any size are welcome.