Dexter: New Blood – Filming Locations
the world's most comprehensive guide to locations where Dexter was shocked



Edward Olsen's mansion



Q. What is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. A mansion. belonging to oil billionaire Edward Olsen.


Q. Where is it supposed to be on the show?

    A. Somewhere  in or near the small town of Iron Lake, New York.


Q. When did we see it on the show?

    A. In Episode 2, of Season 9, "Storm of F*ck".

    We first learn of Edward Olsen himself in the very first episode, when his helicopter is spotted flying over Iron Lake on his way to his mansion.






    We later see him in person, coming out of the Iron Lake Tavern to address a group of protesters. It is there that we learn that he is an oil billionaire.

But we don't see his house until the second episode, when Angela drives up there to ask to use his helicopter as part of the town's search effort looking for the missing Matt Caldwell.

It is a large and imposing  estate behind gates.

Olsen himself shows up again when Audrey's car breaks down on the road, and he offers to help her.


Q. What is it actually in real life?

    A. A mansion, just not in New York.


Q. Where can I find it in real life?

    A. In the real world, this is the Bayard Thayer estate, built in 1903.

    Known as Hawthorne Hill, the estate sits on around 200 acres, and the 21,802 square foot house itself  boasts a startling 47 bedrooms, 28 bathrooms, and 13 fireplaces.

    The address is 679 George Hill Road, in Lancaster,  Massachusetts. But that only takes you to the stone gates that guard the 2,000 -foot road leading up to the house.

    Here is a photo of those gates, shot by Ron B:


    The house itself maps to approximately 42°27'18.8"N 71°42'21.7"W .


    Bayard Thayer was born In 1862, into a very wealthy family with a long history in Massachusetts (among other things, they founded the Boston stock exchange).  His inherited wealth meant that he never really had to work, and he seemed to have spent most of his time pursuing a rich man's hobbies and sports, such as yachting, hunting, travel, horseracing, and breeding show dogs & horses. After spending a considerable amount of time in Japan, he decided to be a horticulturist (an expert in garden cultivation), which seemed to consistent mainly of collecting various plants from around the world and creating the gardens around his large estate in Lancaster (which, as big as it was, was only his summer house, while the Thayers lived most of the year In Boston).  He died in 1916. A devastating hurricane in 1938 caused major damage to the estate, particularly to the trees that Bayard Thayer treasured, and that apparently ended the family's involvement with the estate.

    Over the years since, the estate passed through various hands, Mostly, though, That nonprofits, some of which found it difficult to maintain the large property. At one point it was a home for Catholic nuns, At another time, it was a school for the blind. In the 1980s, Deepak Chopra converted it into a holistic medicine retreat known as the Maharishi Ayurveda Health Center, which attracted the likes of George Harrison, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, and Barbra Streisand. Butt that shut down in 2012, when the owner hoped to sell the property for $16 million. However, buyers were not forthcoming at that price.

    The estate now sits empty. And without the unlimited resources of the super-rich who built these mammoth estates, they are simply too expensive to maintain, I get the impression that the estate might be gradually falling into disrepair.  It is currently on sale, with the price reduced to about $2.5 million, and its future is uncertain.  Some portions of the estate's land have already been sold off to developers, and that seems likely to continue.

    Update: Jhanks to Heather for letting me know that the property was sold around the time the filming wrapped On December 30, 2021 (or at least the mansion and 56 remaining acres that hadn't  already been sold off to developers). No word yet about what the new owner plans to do with the property. (You can read about it here.)

    Scenes from the 2019 movie version of "Little Women" (starring Meryl Streep and Emma Watson) were filmed both inside the mansion and outside in its gardens. The estate's coach house was turned Into the Concord train station for the movie.

    We see the gates and the mansion's exterior when Angela arrives the estate.

    But based on the photos I've seen of the mansion's interior (one of which I've included below). it appears that they also filmed the interior scenes Inside the actual home, rather than on a studio set. (That fireplace looks identical to the one we see in the scene where Angela talk to Olsen.)




Q. How the heck did you figure out where it was?

    A. This was one of the few Dexter filming locations that had never been mentioned in any of the local Massachusetts news stories, so I had to find it on my own. But it wasn't particularly difficult. After all, how many giant mansions can there be in Massachusetts?

    So I first Googled for images of mansions in that state, but that turned up too many different possibilities. So, I narrowed my search by including the names of the local communities where I knew they had been filming, such as Sterling, Worcester, and Grafton. It took a while, but when I got around to trying Lancaster, the very first image that popped up was the very recognizable Bayard Thayer estate.


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