John F. Kennedy NHS Opens for the 2011 Season

Date: May 11, 2011
Contact: Jim Roberts, 617-566-7937 x10

Brookline, MA – John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, located at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, reopens to visitors for the summer season on Sunday, May 22. Visitor hours are Wednesday through Sunday from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm. Ranger-guided house tours are offered from 9:30 am to 3:30 pm, with the final tour at 3:30 pm. From 4:00 to 5:00, visitors are welcome to follow a self-guided tour through the first and second floors of the house. Hand-held audio-players are available so that visitors may follow Mrs. Kennedy’s tour in English, French, German, Spanish, and Japanese. Admission to the site is free.  

Sunday, May 29, 2011 marks the 42nd anniversary of John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site’s official dedication as a National Park Service site on May 29, 1969. It is also the 94th anniversary of the birth of the country’s 35th president. To commemorate these two anniversaries, the site will hold a special open house on Saturday and Sunday, May 28 and 29 during visitor hours from 9:30 am to 5 pm.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site preserves the birthplace (1917) and boyhood home of the 35th president of the United States. The modest house was the first home shared by the president’s father and mother, Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. John, the second of nine children, spent his formative years in Brookline as his family began its rise to national prominence. In 1967, Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy returned to 83 Beals Street to commemorate his life, restoring the birthplace to her recollection of its 1917 appearance.

Today, National Park Service rangers provide tours of the nine-room house museum where Kennedy family furnishings, photographs, and significant mementos personally collected and arranged by the president’s mother are on exhibit. A taped narrative, featuring Mrs. Kennedy in her own words, is a unique and evocative addition to both the ranger-led and self-guided tours.

A small visitor center in the house basement offers exhibits, a film, a bookstore, and a restroom. A self-guided tour of the neighborhood is also included in the site brochure and gives visitors the opportunity to see other nearby sites associated with the Kennedy family, including a second home in Brookline, the location of the family’s Catholic church, the Edward Devotion School which John Kennedy attended, and the Coolidge Corner shopping district.


-NPS