Kennedy home in Hyannis Point, Massachusetts, gifted by the family to political education institute
The house at 50 Marchant Avenue in Hyannis Port – the backdrop of many famous Kennedy family moments captured on film and photographs – has been gifted to a political education institute.
The ownership of part of the famed compound has been transferred out of family ownership to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
It brings the family’s 84-year ownership of the 21-room waterfront house to an end.
The transfer fulfils a promise made by Senator Ted Kennedy, who died at the house in 2009, to his mother, Rose, that the home be preserved for charitable use. It has been given to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
The house was where in 1956, John F. Kennedy, in consultation with his family, decided that he would seek the US Presidency and where the family celebrated on election night 1960.
"This world-famous house is a national treasure, the setting in which this great American political family made history, year after year, for nearly a century,” presidential historian Michael Beschloss says.
“Like Hyde Park for the Roosevelts or Quincy for the Adamses, if you want to really understand Joseph and Rose Kennedy, President Kennedy and his brothers and sisters, and their families, you will have to go to Hyannis Port," Beschloss says.
"The gift of the house to the EMK Institute is an exceptional act of generosity by the Kennedy family, which will have an impact on generations of visitors."
The late senator left it to his widow, Vicki, but with the wish that it would someday be used as a centre where scholars and public figures could gather to ponder policy issues.
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate website says the EMK is “dedicated to educating the public about government, invigorating public discourse, encouraging participatory democracy, and inspiring the next generation of citizens and leaders to engage in the public square.”
Her friends and associates said the house evoked too many sad memories of her husband and she never wanted to use it much.
“This house was my family’s epicentre, where my grandparents, father, uncles and aunts would retreat to connect with one another through heated political debates in the dining room and rousing games on the front lawn,” Ted Kennedy Jr. said today.
“Over the generations, we have returned to Hyannis Port in times of both happiness and pain,” he said. “We have come to celebrate baptisms and marriages, await election results, and grieve the passing of our relatives.”
“Even though my family still considers Hyannis Port to be our home, we recognise that this house is a unique and historic place that should be preserved so that future students of history and politics will better understand how this house helped to develop, define and sustain my family,” the late senator’s eldest son told the Boston Globe.
The $5.5 million property is the centrepiece of the compound, where some of the nation’s most dramatic modern political history took place.
The compound includes other Kennedy homes, including former President John F. Kennedy’s house, which will remain in the family.
The institute also said the Kennedy family would have “limited usage of the property”.
“There are long-standing easements on the property granting beach access to Kennedy family members who own adjacent properties, which will remain in effect as part of the deed transfer,” the statement said.
Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy purchased the property in 1928. The home was originally a 15-room white clapboard house on about a hectare, with a lawn running down to Nantucket Sound. The home today sits on 0.78 hectares acres and is 841 square metres. The history of the house dates back to 1904 built for Beulah A.B. Malcom. The Kennedys rented the house for the summer for several years before purchasing it themselves. At time of the purchase the house, the family included seven of the Kennedys' eventual nine children. Over the next two decades the house was remodeled and expanded to accommodate the growing family.
John F. Kennedy purchased a nearby home in 1956, and shortly thereafter his brother Robert also purchased a neighbouring house. For a time Jean Kennedy Smith and her husband Stephen E. Smith owned a home in the neighbourhood as well. This cluster of family residences became known as "The Kennedy Compound". Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Sargent Shriver owned a home nearby as well.
The Kennedy family became an integral part of the local community.
Photos courtesy of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
