Back when the world was their oyster, Hyannis Port and the briny coast of New England was the Kennedy family’s oyster bed.
Photos of their perpetually smiling faces playing football on the front lawn, sailing the Nantucket Sound, khaki shorts and rolled up sleeves. Freshly-pressed summer dresses, windblown hair and bare feet have become as much a part of the American iconography as Marilyn Monroe standing on the subway grate.
Here’s an unstressed JFK looking picture perfect on top of his beloved sailboat. A group shot of all nine children on the beach looking toothy and goofy. There’s Jackie O in a tailored A-line dress meeting her fiancé’s family for the first time. Then later, as First Lady, while lounging on blue patio furniture with her children John Jr. and Caroline and their bevy of dogs.
For almost a century, the rambling white clapboard mansion at 50 Marchant Avenue has served as a coastal playground for the Kennedy clan and later generations to laugh, play, and grieve away from the public eye.
It’s where JFK plotted his political career from freshman congressman, to senator and President of the United States. It’s where John and Jacqueline Bouvier posed for Life Magazine as a newly engaged couple; and where the family gathered in full to watch the nail-biting election returns that made John F. Kennedy the 35th President of the United States.
Among the chintz sofas, hook rugs and matching drapes, the legend of Camelot was born.
It would also be a place that sustained them during more trying times, as the so-called ‘Kennedy curse’ struck the family with four of the children killed prematurely in the following years.
It’s where the family first learned that Joe Jr, a bomber pilot in WWII, was killed abroad in 1944, and where they grieved after Kick Kennedy died four years later aged just 28 in a plane crash in the south of France.
It’s where the eldest sister, Rosemary, enjoyed her teenage years before a botched lobotomy left her institutionalized for the rest of her life. And where the family collectively mourned the assassinations of both John F. Kennedy in 1963, just two years after taking office; and Bobby Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968 after winning the California presidential primary.
Hyannis would be engulfed in almost unbearable sadness once again in 1999 when John F. Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard on his way to a family wedding. And again in 2019, when Bobby Kennedy’s 22-year-old granddaughter, Saoirse, died of an accidental overdose.
Through it all, the Kennedy Compound has been a safe haven for the dynasty to act themselves, to mourn, to celebrate, to enjoy, and to dine during the darkest hours of their history.
Now a new book titled ‘White House by the Sea,’ by Kate Storey lays bare the most intimate secrets that were kept behind the walls of the house that kicked off the myth of Camelot.
In June 1953, after announcing their engagement to the press, John brought Jacqueline Bouvier, a shy socialite from New York to meet his family for the first time at his family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He invited a photographer from Life Magazine on a whim to take pictures of the celebratory weekend, after meeting the snapper while waiting for his flight at La Guardia airport
The nine Kennedy kids would spend idyllic summers in Hyannis Port, playing intense games of touch football, racing sailboats, and attending dances. Pictured on Thanksgiving in 1948, from left: John F. Kennedy, Jean Kennedy-Smith, mother Rose Kennedy, father Joseph Kennedy Sr., Patricia Lawford, Robert F. Kennedy, Eunice Mary Shriver, Edward Kennedy (squatting). Noticeably absent from the photo is Joe Jr., who died in 1944 while piloting a plane in WWII and the eldest daughter Rosemary who was institutionalized from a botched lobotomy
Jackie seemed most comfortable out on the water during her first visit to the compound in 1953. Before lunch, the siblings piled into Jack’s beloved sailboat, the Victura, where a Life Magazine photographer snapped this iconic image of the newly engaged couple
In 1928, Joseph Kennedy purchased the three acre property on a short dead-end street that opens directly onto the Nantucket Sound and immediately got to work expanding the main house to include twenty-one rooms, twelve bedrooms, a steam room and a 50 person theater in the basement. It became known to the children and neighbors as ‘the Big House’
Eventually, as the Kennedy children got older, they expanded into three neighboring estates, one for Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, one for John and Jackie, and one for Eunice. The houses backed up against each other so kids could cut through the grass to visit cousins and grandparents, and thus the Kennedy Compound was officially born
Joe Kennedy Sr. was the hard scrabble son of a Boston politician who made a fortune through stocks and real estate.
After renting a few houses on the Cape for his brood of boisterous children, he finally decided to settle down in the sleepy village of Hyannis Port in 1928.
He purchased a three acre property on a short dead-end street that opens directly onto the Nantucket Sound and immediately got to work expanding it to include twenty-one rooms, twelve bedrooms, a steam room and a 50 person theater in the basement.
It became known to the family and neighborhood kids as the ‘Big House.’
From day one, it was a hive of recreational activity.
When the yard wasn’t being used for cutthroat games of touch football, it was used as a baseball diamond, or a putting green.
There was a swimming pool a well as the Nantucket Sound, which they enjoyed for sailing and waterskiing.
The renovated property also included a new separate hut to serve as a private sanctuary for the family matriarch, Rose Kennedy.
Unlike her children, she didn’t enjoy being out on the water. If she wasn’t attending Mass at the nearby Catholic church, her days were spent with her children and husband when he was home.
‘It’s solitary confinement not splendor I need,’ she once said.
Rose and Joe Sr. had an unspoken agreement about his extramarital affairs, as long as he was discreet and didn’t embarrass the family.
Albeit Joe Sr.’s romance with Hollywood star, Gloria Swanson set tongues wagging in Hyannis Port when she landed by sea plane in the summer of 1928.
By then, Joe was making waves in Hollywood with the purchase of Film Booking Offices of America and they had already been sleeping with each other for a year.
Gawkers stood on the beach to catch a glimpse of the silver screen icon, whose glamour and glitz stood out among the barefoot beach crowd.
Joe was discreet at first, stashing her away in Californian villa. But he became so infatuated with Swanson that he started bringing her on family trips. This was the first time he invited her into his family’s inner sanctum.
Nonetheless, Rose kept her head high and treated Swanson like any other professional colleague of her husband’s, despite the fact that he openly showered her with attention.
The private movie theatre was a popular attraction for the neighborhood kids, but young girls quickly learned to refuse Joe Sr.’s invitation to sit next to him.
‘Big Joe,’ as he was called, ‘liked to pinch’ the pretty girls he asked to sit up front next to him, recalled Nancy Tenney, a close pal of Kick’s, who grew up across the street.
‘My friend Sancy was cute and blonde, and he’d say, ‘Sancy, how nice to see you, come sit with me,’ and she’d roll her eyes,’ said Tenney. ‘He leans over this way so she has to lean this way. I never sat next to him—I was like one of the children,’ she added.
Competition was drilled into them from an early age by Joe, who always expected excellence from his children.
‘Coming in second was just no good,’ said Eunice, his fifth child.
In a household devoted to sports, he supervised swimming lessons, stood on the sidelines of tennis matches, and puttered behind them in a motorboat as they went sailing.
Joseph and Rose Kennedy pose for a picture on the beach with their children in front of their Hyannis Port, Massachusetts home. (Ted Kennedy, the youngest had not been born yet). Joe was a domineering father who had high expectations of his children. He stood in the yard wearing his dress shoes supervising their swimming lessons and tennis matches, and puttered behind them in a motorboat as they sailing
The Kennedy children: Rosemary, John, Eunice, Joe Jr. and Kathleen, in the water at Hyannis Port in 1925
Jackie gamely catches the football with John and Ted during her first visit to the Compound in 1953. ‘Touch football was not a matter of strategy with the Kennedy family. It was a matter of blood and thunder,’ said Thomas Biloudeau, a Harvard pal of Joe Jr.’s
John loved retreating to Hyannis Port. ‘I always come back to the Cape and walk on the beach when I have a tough decision to make,’ he once said, ‘The Cape is the one place I can think and be alone’
Jackie wasn’t rough-and-tumble like the Kennedys, but she was a good sport as she got to know her new family. In the front yard of the Big House, Jackie played softball with Ted, as John approaches in the background
Senator John Kennedy and his fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier play tennis
The first family tragedy was Rosemary, the eldest daughter who was born with an intellectual disability.
Always striving for perfection and worried that she would tarnish the family’s reputation, Joe tried to keep her hidden from public view.
‘She must never be at home for her sake as well as everyone else’s,’ he wrote in a letter to his wife.
Eventually Joe (without telling his wife), took Rosemary to receive an experimental lobotomy that turned her into a vegetable. She spent the rest of her years at a full-care psychiatric facility in Wisconsin.
‘The neighbors in Hyannis Port noticed that Rosemary suddenly stopped coming home to the Cape, but they didn’t dare ask where she’d gone,’ wrote Kate Storey in White House by the Sea.
‘The question of what happened to Rosemary was never discussed—within the family or with anyone else. Rosemary simply vanished.’
A new book details the tragedies and triumphs behind the elusive Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The coastal playground has been a sanctuary for the political dynasty to play and grieve for almost 100 years, since the family patriarch, Joe Kennedy first purchased the ‘Big House’ in 1928
The second child to not come back to the Big House was the eldest son, Joe Jr., who died in a plane crash over England while on a secret mission during WWII.
Only two years apart, Joe Jr. and John were in constant competition with each other as they strived for their father’s approval and athletic dominance in their sports-obsessed family.
Joe Jr. was the golden boy. He was charming and smart, ‘but he could also be a bully,’ wrote Storey.
He was once described as the type of kid ‘who wouldn’t leave an unprotected shin unkicked.’
On the opposite end of the spectrum was John. Bookish, slight and sickly, he was often the object of Joe Jr.’s wrath. But nowhere was their sibling rivalry more on display than during family games of football on the front yard.
As one school friend remarked: ‘Touch football was not a matter of strategy with the Kennedy family. It was a matter of blood and thunder.’
Both brothers fought in WWII; and although Joe Jr. was the son destined for greatness – it was inevitably John who became a famous war hero when his PT-109 boat was torpedoed by the Japanese.
John’s valiant rescue quickly became the talk of the Cape, especially during Joe Sr.’s 50th birthday celebration, where they toasted to ‘the father of our hero.’
Joe Jr. allegedly seethed with jealousy over the attention lavished on his brother. And according to one guest quoted in Storey’s book, he spent that night ‘crying in his bedroom.’
‘Joe Jr. and Jack had been competing since they could walk, chasing each other since they could run. But Joe Jr. was always the family’s star, the one destined for great things,’ she writes.
But within a year, Joe Jr. would be dead. He was killed while running a reconnaissance mission over England in 1944.
The book recounts how two priests broke the news to Joe Sr. and Rose in the family’s living room. The younger children broke down in tears, while their father stoically told them to continue in the sailing race that was scheduled for later that afternoon.
‘We’ve got to carry on,’ he said. ‘We must take care of the living. There is a lot of work to be done.’
Three of the Kennedy brothers, John, Robert and Ted in their teens, stand together at their family compound in Hyannis Port. A school friend of John’s remarked on how the sons idolized their father and how Joe Sr. created an insular environment for his family: ‘Jack and Joe Jr. would ask questions and Mr. Kennedy would answer in great detail. But if I asked a question, he’d treat me like a piece of dirt. He’d ignore me. He was only really interested in his own family’
The Big House in Hyannis Port sustained the Kennedy’s through many trying times. First through the death of Joe Jr. in the War (standing far left), then the botched lobotomy of the eldest daughter Rosemary, and the subsequent assassinations of John Kennedy in 1963 (center) and Bobby Kennedy in 1968
Only two years apart, Joe Jr. (right) and John were in constant competition with each other as children as they strived for their father’s approval and athletic dominance in their sports-obsessed family. Joe Jr. was the son destined for greatness but died on a reconnaissance mission over the English Channel in 1944. From that point on, all of Joe Sr.’s attention and political aspirations were shifted onto John
Joe Jr. was charming and smart, ‘but he could also be a bully,’ wrote Storey. He was once described as the type of kid ‘who wouldn’t leave an unprotected shin unkicked.’ John was often on the receiving end of Joe Jr.’s wrath. But nowhere was their sibling rivalry more on display than during family games of football on the front yard
The eldest daughter, Rosemary Kennedy (right), was born with an intellectual disability and was the first tragedy in the Kennedy family when Joe Sr. took her to undergo an experimental lobotomy procedure in 1941 that left her in a permanent vegetative state by the age of 22. She was institutionalized at a psychiatric hospital in Wisconsin for the rest of her life. Kick Kennedy (left) died in 1948, when her plane went down in the South of France with her married lover on board, while en route to ask for her father’s marriage blessing. Above, the sisters are pictured with their mother (center) being presented at the Court of Saint James, while their father served as ambassador to England in 1938
From that day forward, all of Joe Sr.’s political aspirations he had for his favorite son were shifted onto John.
Wilbert the groundskeeper recalls how Joe Sr. stayed in his bedroom for days listening to classical music after Joe Jr. died; while Rose put on a brave face and tried her best to move on.
Indeed, John didn’t let the death of his brother get in the way of his labor day plans on the Cape that year. With Bobby home from Harvard and his sister Kick, back from Europe; John invited some Navy pals for a party.
For a brief moment the house sounded like it had when they were kids, as they laughed, sung, and regaled stories while drinking scotch stolen from Joe Sr.’s liquor cabinet.
The fun ended abruptly when finally Joe Sr. poked his head out his second-floor bedroom window and shouted down below: ‘Jack, don’t you and your friends have any respect for your dead brother?’
Less than a week later, Kick’s husband would be dead, too. Billy Cavendish died after being shot by a German sniper, on September 9, 1944.
Then Kick was gone in 1948. Her plane went down in the South of France with her married lover on board, while en route to ask for her father’s marriage blessing.
As John climbed through the political ranks, Joe Sr. continued to puppeteer his dynasty from Cape Cod.
To outsiders looking in, their insular little world sometimes seemed peculiar.
Mary Pitcairn, an early girlfriend of John’s, recalled how Joe Sr. once came into her bedroom while she was visiting the Big House to kiss her goodnight.
‘I was in my nightgown, ready for bed. Eunice was in her bedroom. We had an adjoining bath. The doors were open. He said, ‘I’ve come to say goodnight,’ and kissed me. Really kissed me,’ she said.
John F. Kennedy rigs up his beloved sailboat, the Victura with his little brother, Ted. ‘It wasn’t easy being the youngest of nine,’ writes Storey. ‘But the older kids adored their baby brother.’ When Joe Jr. got his own boat, he named it ‘Teddy.’ And when ‘Jack and Bobby were feeling charitable they’d include him, but more often than not, they stayed a few steps ahead, shouting over their shoulders, ‘Hit it, squirt!’
Jackie quietly observed life in Big House on her first trip to the Compound in 1953. In the TV room she examined photographs of the family’s time spent in London. Joe with King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II; Joe and Princess Helena Victoria watching the trial air maneuvers in 1939; Bobby and Teddy at the opening of the London Zoo; Kick and Rosemary smiling at the camera; and the entire family lined up on the embassy grounds. Their London years, were the last months they shared as a family of 11, before Joe Jr. died fighting in the war and Kick in a plane crash
Senator John F. Kennedy relaxes on a floral chair alongside his then-fiancée, as they’re interviewed for LIFE magazine in June 1953. The main floor in the ‘Big House’ contained a sun room, living room, television room, dining room, and guest bedroom
Jackie sits next to her future sister-in-laws Eunice and Jean on the porch of the Big House regaling them with how their brother John had proposed to her
John won the Democratic presidential nominee in July of 1960 and spent the last few weeks that summer relaxing in Hyannis Port before he returned to the Senate that August
In June 1953, after announcing their engagement to the press, John brought Jacqueline Bouvier, a shy socialite from New York to meet his family for the first time at the Hyannis compound.
News cameras swarmed the coastline eager to catch a glimpse of ‘America’s most eligible bachelor’ and his young fiancé.
The daughter of a stockbroker, Jackie spent her childhood summers in the Hamptons horseback riding, reading books and taking ballet, she didn’t hail from a large and chaotic household. But she was a good sport nonetheless.
Clad in a neat, sleeveless button-up blouse and pleated khaki shorts, she tossed the football with Teddy and gamely took a swing when Jack lightly tossed her a softball in the backyard.
As cameras clicked in the background, shaggy-headed Kennedy’s spilled out of the house. Teddy in his plaid swimsuit, Eunice and Jean in their halter tops with matching shorts.
Jackie did her best to soak in her new family life. By the end of the weekend, she had won over Jack’s siblings and Rose Kennedy. Upon arriving back in Washington DC, she wrote to her future mother in law: ‘It seems to me that very few people have been able to create what you have—a family built on love and loyalty and gaiety.’
‘If I can even come close to building that with Jack I will be very happy,’ she wrote.
As the children got older and began families of their own, they expanded the property into three surrounding estates. Bobby and his wife Ethel acquired a residence adjacent to the Big House for their brood of 11 children.
In 1957, John and Jackie bought a shingled two-story house that backed up to Bobby and Ethel’s, so kids could cut through the grass to visit each other.
In 1961, Ted Kennedy and his wife Joan moved into a cottage nearby in the ultra-exclusive enclave of Hyannis Port known as Squaw Island. It connected to his sibling’s homes by a strip of beach.
Lastly, Jean Kennedy and her husband Stephen purchased a home at the end of Marchant Avenue and officially the Kennedy Compound was born.
The ‘Big House’ with the circular driveway is the center of all activity on the Kennedy Compound. Bobby and Ethel Kennedy’s house is situated to the left of it, while John and Jackie’s cottage sits behind Bobby’s in the top left corner
Ted Kennedy was the last person of the original generation to live in the Big House. Since his death in 2009, the house has sat empty, mostly used to host events for the extended Kennedy clan and their organizations. ‘There are no grandchildren running across the yard. The tennis court sits unused as vines snake up the fence around it. The house is dark and quiet. Suspended in time,’ writes Storey
The whole family had posed for their only group picture on the day John was elected president, November 9, 1960
It was in the Big House that John officially decided to run for president, over Thanksgiving dinner in 1956.
‘There was a frisson in the air,’ wrote Storey. Jack pulled his father aside to discuss something in private. ‘When they came back, their arms were around each other and they had matching grins. Jack had decided to run for president.’
Four years later, it was in the Kennedy’s humble two story cottage on the compound where young Caroline bounded into her father’s bedroom on November 9, 1960 to greet him: ‘Good morning Mr. President!’
After John gave his acceptance speech in the local armory, the family went back to the Big House where Joe Sr. hosted a cocktail party. The next day the family opted for their favorite pastime with a game of football on the lawn before Joe called everyone in for lunch.
When John and his sister Jean held back to catch up with each other, their father called on them to ‘hurry up.’
Jean recalled in the book how her brother turned to her and joked, ‘Doesn’t he know I’m President of the United States?’
Rose and Joe Sr. had just come back from an afternoon drive when news broke over the radio that their son had been shot in Dallas. Joe was napping, and missed the announcement. (By then, Joe needed full-time care after a stroke left him unable to walk and talk).
Upon first hearing the news, Rose said she felt ‘a mixture of reactions. She later wrote: ‘I had trained myself through the years not to become too visibly upset at bad news, even very bad news, because I had a strong notion that if I broke down, everybody else in the household would.’
Later that evening, when Rose got the official word that John was dead, she took a walk on the beach. Joe’s nurse, Rita Dallas, found her outside alone, shivering and invited her back inside for a cup of tea.
The family decided to wait until the next morning to break the news that Joe’s second son had been killed. Ted had gone into his bedroom and ripped the television cables out so he wouldn’t hear it on the evening news.
A week later, Jackie arrived back on the Cape for Thanksgiving. She went straight up to Joe’s room on the second floor, carrying the American flag that was draped over John’s casket. Sitting on the stool next to his bed, she held his hand and said: ‘Grandpa, Jack’s gone, and nothing will ever be the same again for us. He’s gone and I want to tell you about it.’
The day after Thanksgiving, Jackie invited Life Magazine journalist, Theodore White to the Kennedy Compound. It was there, when the grieving widow, then just 34, crafted the myth that would define her husband’s legacy for decades.
As an epilogue to his brief presidency, she quoted John’s favorite musical: ‘Don’t let it be forgot, that for one brief, shining moment there was Camelot.’
The summer of 1961 was Hyannis Port’s first to host the ‘Summer White House.’ Children spilled out of their houses as soon as they heard Marine One land in the front yard. Bobby’s kids would run over from next door to line up in front of the Big House porch and Joe sat in his rocking chair proudly watching over the whole scene. Above, John is greeted by his two children John Jr. (in red shorts) and Caroline (in black overalls)
The First Family on the patio of their Squaw Island House in Hyannis Port with several puppies and dogs. Despite being allergic to dogs, JFK loved animals and wanted his children to experience the joy of having pets. His favorite dog was Charlie, a Welsh terrier gifted to him by his wife during his presidential campaign
President Kennedy being interviewed by Walter Cronkite in the yard of his Hyannis Port home
Kennedy and his 2-year-old daughter Caroline play outdoors, on the day after the US presidential election in Hyannis Port. That morning, Caroline’s nanny coached her to greet her father with ‘Good morning Mr. President!’
The family regrouped the following summer, despite the void they felt. ‘I myself keep very busy all the time,’ wrote Rose in her diary. ‘It is the only way I can keep normal and not think about the time when we were said to be the most powerful family in the world.’
As the deluge of Kennedy grandchildren descended upon the Cape again, Joe Sr. had an olive-green World War II two-seater observation plane refurbished and shipped to the compound as a gift for all the grandchildren to play in. But it was John Jr., who loved it the most.
And yet the compound was consumed by grief again in the summer of 1968 when Bobby was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel while campaigning for president.
His wife Ethel, was still pregnant with their eleventh child. To the outside world she seemed to be handling his death better than imagined. She continued to play tennis, but with a fury that didn’t exist before.
With Joe Sr. unable to talk from his stroke, John dead, and Bobby gone; ‘Hyannis Port became something of a matriarchy, with the widows left to run things,’ writes Storey.
They employed the help of cooks, governesses, sailing instructors, and ‘Irish bunnies,’ as Ted Kennedy called the young women who were brought over from Ireland for the summer.
As John Jr. got older, his mother, Jackie, began spending more of her time on Martha’s Vineyard, where she built a sprawling home on 375 acres. Even after Jackie left, John brought his friends from college and then his girlfriends to the house in Hyannis Port.
In his short three years as President, Kennedy often used the living room of his Hyannis Port home to conduct important state matters. Above, Kennedy (center) meets with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (sitting left of Kennedy)
After John’s assassination, Jackie tried her best to give her children a normal life. Above, John Kennedy Jr. rides a bicycle near his summer home on way to the beach
John F. Kennedy Jr. walks with his cousin David Kennedy, who was present in the California hotel when his father, Bobby was shot and killed in 1968. Later, he died tragically and mysteriously, in a Palm Beach hotel room at age 28. John Jr. died at age 39 in a plane crash off of Martha’s Vinyard
Carolyn Bessette, whom he married in 1996, loved the charm and history of that old, weathered house. The first time she visited, she told John’s childhood best friend, Billy Noonan, ‘I like coming to this house. I went down to Palm Beach with John, and the place was creepy. There were too many ghosts down there…. This house has got a nice vibe to it.’
As John Jr. and Carolyn were more and more hounded by the press in Manhattan, Hyannis Port became their escape. They hosted intimate dinner parties for their friends, like the ones John’s mother used to have. And they slowly began to renovate the home, though John wanted the house to continue looking like it always had.
But the Cape would be consumed in grief again when John, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren were on their way to a family wedding on July 16, 1999, when their plane went down over the Atlantic.
They were headed for the wedding of John’s cousin, and, while in Hyannis Port, John and Carolyn had planned to meet with the interior designer who’d worked closely with John’s mother and grandmother on their Cape homes.
They never got the chance to finish their renovation, but the tight-knit Hyannis Port community still shares stories of their memories of the president, politicians, and their children who were raised there.