Mary Prentiss Inn

Prentiss House is a cute property in a nice location, but that’s where the positives ended for us. Our room was unbearably hot, and we discovered typed instructions on the AC unit warning not to use cold mode. This tells me their systems are outdated and poorly maintained if they can’t handle cooling for just 20 rooms. It’s unacceptable. I can’t imagine how awful it would be during the summer. At one point, the thermostat in our room hit 87°, which is far from their website’s claim of “controllable heat/ac” in every room—a blatant falsehood. We texted management, and they promised to drop off a fan, while suggesting we “turn down the temperature” and “open a window.” The fan never arrived. We endured two miserable days and nights in a sweltering room and dreaded returning to the property after a long day of sightseeing. Honestly, I’m just thankful we weren’t staying longer. Based on this experience, I cannot recommend Prentiss House.

My friends and I stayed here over the Fourth of July weekend and was first greeted by an AC leak in our unit. We tried to handle it ourselves but it got progressively worse with a very foul odor filling up our unit. Long story short, we went back and forth with customer service via text (limited holiday/weekend staffing) and they were unable to move our party to another unit due to no vacancy. We ended up packing up and vacating the house at 10 pm to a different last-minute accommodation. Fortunately, we were able to get in contact with Amanda from Thatch, who was more than empathetic and accommodating. Other than this hiccup, the house itself is very cute and homey. We loved the location and the businesses close by. Thank you for your help, Amanda!

We just had a stay at the Prentiss House by Thatch – I made the mistake of thinking things promised on their website would be in effect. We were pleased with the home upon arrival; however things went off as we returned from dinner we discovered there was no A/C! Another person in the lobby confirmed that they had a fan and no A/C (it was about 80 degrees outside and 78 in our room). We left a window open and tried to go to bed about 10PM – Note: Their stated quiet hours are 9:30PM-8AM – at 11:30PM we were shocked to hear a door slam and someone slamming what sounded like luggage against a wall then each of the drawers were slammed, slam, slam….they finally settled. Then at 1:15AM a drunk couple arrived to have a long chat and make-out session on the porch with our window open we sadly were hearing all their considerations about should he come in with her (they also were talking loudly as if they were still in the club talking over music) finally she let him in, but then they were so loud (nobody explained to her about “inside voice” as a child). I went out to the foyer and requested “Quite hours” they clearly didn’t know what I was talking about and KEPT talking loudly – I said it again “Quiet hours please” she decided to take him to her room… he soon left – closing the door loudly and stomping off down the sidewalk. We got settled in the heat just in time for 1:45 another arrival of a couple with a ton of luggage trying to haul it all up to the 3rd floor while chatting in the hallway… I again asked them about “quite hours” – they also didn’t know what I was talking about and why was this man up in the night. I messaged and emailed the company and didn’t hear back from them until about lunchtime…when they explained to me that others were on VACATION and that I need to be considerate of their holiday. WOW – my partner was on holiday tagging along with me. Meanwhile we were out to buy sleeping pills, a fan to put next to the window and visit the Prentiss house gym. The BSC gym is far away and didn’t know anything about the Prentiss House finally the 2nd person we talked to said “yeah, we don’t know what to do about that number on the paperwork” and let us workout anyway. I would also note that the bed was hard – I usually like a firm bed but this was like sleeping on the floor. When we showered the shampoo and conditioner bottles were empty and I had to go downstairs and find a young man cleaning. He didn’t speak English but did understand money when I gave him a tip that I needed shampoo – he got me a bottle. We had to buy the shampoo. The next night when we arrived back at the House there was a BIG mouse at the front porch…. I wrote that off as maybe from the alley was next door behind businesses – BTW that business has their BIG trash can dumped on Thu. Morning at 8AM you wake up to a BIG crash bang bang/boom. So after a rough night in the heat we were treated to this alarm clock with a lot of bottles crashing into a dump truck.

This was a lovely place and centrally located to Cambridge. Easy to walk to metro stations and to places near Harvard. We were skeptical about an Air BNB without someone on site, but the host was in touch easily and quickly through text.