hello i'm jason atlas and welcome to
john fitzgerald kennedy national
historic site
this is the birthplace of president
kennedy he was born in the very house
behind me
on may 29 1917 this was his parents
first home
rose elizabeth fitzgerald and joseph
patrick kennedy senior
were married in october of 1914 they
bought this house
and they lived here for six years until
1920
and they had their first four of their
nine children while they lived here so
you had their oldest
joe jr jack kennedy who later became the
35th president of the united states
and sisters rosemary and kathleen those
were the children who lived in this home
so it was jfk's great great grandparents
on both sides of the family that came
over
to boston in the late 1840s
and so his grandparents were born in
boston as were his parents
and so why move out to brookline in the
early 1900s moving out of the city
where the family was used to having
their own family and friends back home
just a few miles out it was really a big
deal at a time where transportation and
communication wasn't uh
such advanced as it is today but in many
ways
brookline was very attractive to the the
newlyweds
for mrs kennedy having schools having
the
family church nearby having shopping
opportunities that was all very
important to mrs kennedy
and for mr kennedy mrs kennedy would
remember
most of our young married friends lived
in rented apartments and as a place to
start our life together
an apartment would have been perfectly
fine for me but not for joe
from the very beginning home was the
center of his world and the only place
that really finally counted in his plans
no matter where those plans took him
from time to time
he had a strong need for privacy for
independence
for being able to choose the people he
wanted to be with in close association
home could not be an apartment but it
had to be a house
and so mr kennedy a bit of a private man
but in many ways wanted to show that he
was doing better than many of the irish
catholics back in boston
and so when mr kennedy bought the house
he was working as a bank president
later he would co-manage a shipyard out
of quincy massachusetts
that produced warships during world war
one and transports and so those were his
two professions while he lived here
uh the family would become one of
america's wealthiest families by the
1950s
and the story that we're going to be
telling today is really
their movement from this house that they
bought when they were first married to a
second home just three blocks away from
here
and we're going to be exploring the
neighborhood where jack kennedy grew up
and for our second stop we actually
didn't go too far we're actually on the
corner of the house right here but the
reason we're stopping here is because
this
this picture that i'm holding was
actually taken right outside of this
home
right about where i'm standing and these
are a picture of the two oldest boys who
lived here
you have joseph patrick kennedy jr the
taller boy the older boy
and then you have him with his younger
brother jack kennedy and so the boys
would be standing somewhere
in these bushes right here and the
picture is taken
behind where i'm standing and if you
notice there's a lot of open
space behind me you're not seeing all
the houses in the picture or the road
this was the very last house on the
street when the family bought it
and it's one of the reasons why they
moved to this home
it was it offered a lot of open space in
the neighborhood
now if you look very closely at this
picture jack's not looking very happy
here
he's frowning and he's pointing at his
brother's hand
because what's going on is older brother
joe is actually squeezing his hand and
there's a little bit of bullying going
on here where jack is pointing to his
brother's hand and
saying to the person taking the picture
this kind of hurts can you do something
about it
and so these boys shared a very close
relationship but they were also
very competitive and competition was
something that was
very very much strongly supported by mr
and mrs kennedy
they wanted their children to grow up to
be competitive they wanted them to grow
up to be tough
but what many people don't know is very
early on the parents had very high
expectations of these children
and early on they wanted one of them to
become president one day
but it was actually joe jr who they had
in mind
joe jr was very much the golden boy in
the family
he pretty much listened to everything
his parents told him to do
he got really good grades in school he
was very athletic
jack was very smart but didn't always
try his best in school
and jack's with getting his parents
attention was often to get into mischief
and so for many years mr and mrs kennedy
were really grooming joe jr for a life
of political service
and sadly he lost his life in world war
ii and
that's when a lot of those pressures
were then placed onto jack kennedy
and it's a rule that he stepped into
more gracefully over time
he realized that the presidency was
something that he wanted for himself
and it was around this time that he also
became the older brother in the family
as well
and so despite all of the open space
that the family had here
living at 83 beale street they were very
close to a place called coolidge corner
and this is a picture of coolidge corner
in the early 1900s so a little bit more
of what it would have looked like when
the family was here
and coolidge corner all of the old
buildings in the center
same buildings that are there today
different shops of course but you see
the ss pierce building with a clock
tower
and also a street car system that led
back into boston
where the family could visit their own
family and friends back in the city
and so they had some means of
transportation and everything was nice
and close for them just a few blocks
from here
and one of the things you don't see
outside of this home but one of the
things that the family did have during
the time they lived here
and this wasn't a picture of their car
but a picture of a car very similar
was a black model t ford car
and mrs kennedy would fondly look back
many years later
on the day that her husband first
brought back this car and decided to
take it for a ride
and she would say that one a great one
of the great thrills of my life was the
day my husband drove home
and our very own brand new gleaming
black
model t ford and so immediately after
supper and the summer twilight
off we went heading towards a
neighborhood shopping center called
coolidge corner joe was occupied with a
challenging job of steering
and i was so excited that it slipped my
mind entirely to mention the excavation
and by the time i saw the lanterns and
shouted a warning
it was too late and into the ditch we
went
so memory of their very first car very
first day driving it and they drove into
a ditch so
it's a cute little story i like to share
about mrs kennedy and that experience
but um as we explore the neighborhood
today we're going to be realizing just
how close
everything was for this family and how
they had
access to a great number of the things
that they would need on a daily basis
so one of the reasons we're stopped here
is because this picture
that you see is of the kennedy's second
car
and it was taken right about where we
are you can see that the big car in the
picture
was actually parked perpendicular in the
road that was there
and the building that you see in the
background is actually the building that
you see behind me right now
and so in this picture you have uh joe
kennedy senior
with his two oldest boys you have joe jr
and jack
and we like to say in this picture he's
throwing showing off his
three prized possessions his brand new
car
and his uh two sons and so this wasn't
any old car in this picture
this was actually a pierce arrow
limousine
and this was purchased while he was
living in this neighborhood as well
and the pierce arrow limousine was the
same car being driven by then president
woodrow wilson
and so we can gather at this point in
time that mr kennedy
is doing pretty well for himself he's
able to buy this
very expensive car and so again
mr kennedy as we mentioned at the
birthplace very much about
image and showing that he had the means
to move to brookline
even as a bank president not really
making what bank presidents made in
those days
in a very short amount of time he's he's
starting to make a lot of money and
that's one of the things that will
bring him from the kennedy's first home
to the second home which is where we're
heading today
and we'll see some differences as we
move through the neighborhood
but doing very well for himself by
purchasing this car
another reason we're stopped here is mrs
kennedy would remember
a bike accident between the two boys
and so one day they decided to race
their bikes
and they then decided to play the game
of chicken where each boy would
ride their bike toward the other boy and
whoever
swerved would be the chicken and neither
boy wanting to be the chicken neither
boy swerved
and joe jr being the older boy being
very physically fit stayed on his bike
jack kennedy being a bit smaller than
his older brother
and also being pretty sick and frail as
a child he ended up flying off of his
bike
ended up with 28 stitches in his leg and
so
mr and mrs kennedy not very happy with
either of the boys when this happened as
you can imagine
but in this circumstance what does this
tell us about
jfk as a young child well it tells us
that he is determined it tells us that
he's brave
he's not going to let his brother get
the best of them and so going back to
the idea of competition
jfk was very much being raised in this
atmosphere of
very serious competition among his
siblings
his father would finally uh fondly say
many times over
that this family wants only winners no
losers
and that it wasn't good enough to be
second place you had to be first place
and so we're seeing an example of that
competitive spirit
and young jack here and so fast forward
to
1962 during the cuban missile crisis
with soviet premier nikita khrushchev in
some ways you're seeing
a game of chicken again all those years
later where jack kennedy was
going up against another adversary and
he didn't back down there's this
famous saying that we came eyeball to
eyeball with the enemy
and the other guy blinked and so again
being raised in this competitive
competitive atmosphere i think really
gave jack kennedy an edge later in life
so we're standing outside of what today
is known as the florida ruffin ridley
school in coolidge corner
when the kennedy family lived in this
neighborhood it was known as the edward
devotion school
and this is the school that the kennedy
children attended jack kennedy up until
his third grade year
and so despite being a very eloquent
speaker being very intellectual and
intelligent being a writer of books
later in life
many people are very surprised to learn
that jfk was not always the best of
students
he often took those classes most
seriously that he enjoyed
oftentimes history classes and writing
classes
but those subjects he didn't like he
didn't always try his best
and so as i mentioned earlier jack
kennedy really didn't always take his
studies very seriously much to the
dismay of his parents
and uh mrs kennedy would remember that
one day one of jack's teachers was
coming to meet with her
and to prepare his mother for the worst
he told his mother
that he was getting on all right but if
you study too much you're liable to go
crazy
so we're seeing a nice example of jfk's
sense of humor in that episode and so
mrs kennedy would say that after finding
jack in states of
what she called quixotic disgrace and
especially after finding the boys up on
a neighbor's roof
she decided that was it was time to
enroll uh the children into a different
school
that at that time had an after-school
supervised program which was very
important
to help keep jack kennedy out of trouble
and so
the parents enrolled him into the dexter
school
now as i mentioned this was the edward
devotion school and contrary to the name
it was actually a public school
and mrs kennedy and her father john
fitzgerald who was the mayor of boston
they really were very strong supporters
of the public school system
and as i mentioned very early on they
had high expectations of their children
and they had grand ideas for them
but they felt public school was very
much an important part of that
upbringing because they very much wanted
their children to be around people from
all walks of life and children
from all walks of life different
families and to also show the boys that
some of these children were better at
things
than they were and so it was kind of a
sort of a humbling experience but also a
very sort of democratic experience
by having them enrolled into the edward
devotion public school
but moving them into the dexter school
which was a private school
this is actually a picture of jack
kennedy when he was playing football at
that school the big d
on his shirt stands for dexter and so
when the boys first arrived at the
school they may
very well have been the only irish
catholics attending the school
and when they first arrived they were
actually made fun of for being
irish for being catholic and in fact
called those words
as almost they were like swear words
cuss words
and so each of the boys very much
handled that differently
joe jr being the older boy being pretty
athletic and
at times being a little bit of a bully
of uh of himself as we mentioned uh
earlier with the bike episode and uh
squeezing of the hands
he would often challenge those boys who
made fun of him
to fights after school and jack
was not much of a fighter in that sense
but he would often get together with the
younger brothers of those older boys
and he would bet marbles with them that
if his brother won the fight
he would get marbles and it was said by
the end of the school year that jack had
a quite a large collection of marbles
but i think we see very different
examples of the boys personalities and
how they handled things
and another really interesting thing
about this picture here
is again jacket is in his football
uniform he
was a quarterback of this team and this
was really a very shining moment in his
life
where a lot of his health issues weren't
really getting in the way and
throughout his entire life even into his
adulthood
he was very sickly and so this was a
moment where
a lot of those issues kind of subsided
and he was playing for this team as
quarterback
another very interesting thing about
this photo is that he is the team
captain here and he was elected by
his teammates to be captain of the team
and so it shows us within a short amount
of time
jack kennedy was making friends and
finding his way
in this new school so we're standing
outside of what was
saint ayden's roman catholic church
which was built in 1911 just before the
family moved to brookline
and it stood as a church until 1999
if you notice today you'll see cars and
people coming and going out of the doors
the church was turned into condominiums
in 1999
but during the 13 years that the kennedy
family lived in brookline this was the
church that they visited
and mrs kennedy the whole family were
irish catholics but mrs kennedy
was especially pious as a youngster she
became
a child of mary which was one of the
highest honors that
a young person could receive in the
catholic church and later in life
she was at the time one of just six
american woman
women who became a papal countess
bestowed the honor by the pope himself
so this was really taking religion to a
very different level
and during the time that she lived here
in brookline mrs kennedy would remember
that she would often take the children
to church every day
she wanted them to realize that church
was a place they could go
every day not just on sundays for
worship and for community
and so one of the parishioners would
remember
mrs kennedy bringing the children to
church and jack kennedy roller skating
up to the church
throwing off his skates really quickly
running inside saying a few prayers and
then running back outside throwing on
his skates and skating away
mrs kennedy would remember another time
when she brought all of the children to
church
and before they went inside she asked
them to pray for a happy death
and so that was very much mrs kennedy's
personality her very strict religious
nature
and when the family got back outside she
asked the children
did you all pray for a happy death and
jack kennedy said to her
no mother i prayed for two brand new
puppies and so we're seeing a great
example of his sense of humor at that
early age
and that would really come about in the
press conferences that he would give as
president
his charm his wit and his humor were
ways that he really
uh captured american audiences in the
1960s
and so jack kennedy would learn to take
his religion a little bit more seriously
and it would become a real foundation in
his life
and uh this picture is taken of him a
little later on
his first con first confirmation and so
we're seeing
a picture of jack very nicely dressed
very well groomed and very proud
of what he's holding in his hands so now
we're at the kennedy's second home in
brookline
we're at 51 abbotsford road at the
corner of
abbotsford and naples roads and this was
the house that the family lived in from
1920 to 1927
and you can see that this house is quite
a bit bigger than the beale street home
mr kennedy was making more money he was
able to afford this home
it cost sixteen thousand dollars in
those days and it was said that mr
kennedy could afford it
but just barely so again we're seeing
another example
of him really trying to push his money
as far as it would go
really trying to create an image of
himself and his family as
people who are doing very well a family
that's doing very well
and as we mentioned with joe jr having
early aspirations for him becoming
president someday and going into
politics at one point in time mr kennedy
he started out in business but he had
his own eyes set on a political career
as well and so again
this was a way of showing that the
family was doing well and they also
simply needed a bigger house as well
they had a growing family
in this home they would have three more
of their nine children
they would have eunice patricia and
bobby when they were living in this
home and so one of the things that mrs
kennedy really liked about this home was
the big wrap around porch that you see
out front
and mrs kennedy believed in something
called scientific mothering the idea
that if you followed science you could
raise your children
in a most proper way and she read all
these books about how to raise your
children and pretty much believed
everything she read
things like exactly what degree the bath
water should be set
and it was different for a child based
on their age exactly how many hugs the
children should get each day
which wasn't many because you didn't
want your child to become too clingy and
dependent on you
and also lining them up in order of
their age before they brushed their
teeth each night
and again before they left the house
making sure that they looked proper when
they were out in public
and so again that big wrap around porch
that i mentioned uh this really
was something that she loved because she
remembered uh having all those children
and being able to put them out on that
porch and what she did was actually put
up little gates
and each child was put in their own
little playpen area on that porch where
they had their own space to play
or they could interact over the the gate
with the other child
and other children brothers and sisters
and they could also
interact with the people who were
passing by on the road and so that was
one of the things that she really loved
about this home
and so now i have some pictures that i
want to show you and we're just going to
move down the road just a little bit
so we didn't move too far down the road
but i wanted to show you another vantage
point of the house and the reason why is
because the next
few pictures that i'm going to show you
were taken right about where we're
positioned now
and so if you see this picture this is
of a young jack kennedy
in 1925 on halloween and if you see the
fence that's in the picture
it's not the same fence that's there
today but the blue fence behind me
you can see that this picture was taken
right in front of the 51 abbotsford road
home
and so what i love about these next few
pictures is
again mr mrs kennedy had very high
expectations of the children they wanted
them to behave
and jack kennedy in many ways he was a a
child
who had a sense of humor and liked to
pull practical jokes but in this picture
here dressed up in halloween
as a police officer i think perhaps
we're getting a taste of
what might have been jack's first foray
into the idea of public service as a
uniformed police officer
and he's behaving very well in this
picture he's posing for the camera
which he does not always do in later
pictures of him
what's also interesting is he's wearing
a hat in this picture which
jfk had a long lifelong dislike for hats
and so
he's wearing the proper uniform here
doing what he's supposed to as a good
police officer
protecting the law in these next few
pictures you're starting to see jack
kennedy's
personality come out a little bit and so
here you see him again positioned with
that
fence behind him he's the little guy
there and he's with his older brother
joe jr
and you're starting to see that
mischievous grin across his face so
telling us a little bit more about his
personality and then finally in this
picture
also taken uh right in this position uh
you're seeing a picture of jfk
with his sisters uh taken right in front
of the home
and this picture we're really seeing
jack kennedy let loose his
shirt is all untucked his collar is a
mess his tie is askew
he's making a face and so in many ways
this was jack kennedy's personality as
a young child and really as a young man
too but he had a sense of humor he knew
how to
have a good time but what i love about
this too is it reminds us that
jfk jack kennedy he wasn't just
sort of this young child that was born
as a president
he wasn't a fully formed president but
he was very much a child growing up here
in brookline
just like all of us were going through
many of the same trials and tribulations
but the presidency would be something
that came around
much later so reminds us that jack
kennedy was
very much like all of us in the sense of
going through those childhood
experiences
and so the family lived here as i
mentioned from 1920 to 1927
and mr kennedy was making a bit more
money in those days he became a trader
on the stock market
he also started producing hollywood
films
and so he was actually spending quite a
bit of time in new york city
all of hollywood's offices were located
in new york at the time
and so making a great deal of money this
would be the house where he made his
first million
and uh by the time he moved out of here
he was worth about 50 million dollars in
today's figure so we can see a much
wealthier man
that started at the rather modest house
over at 83 beale street
this is an even nicer house that showed
his growing wealth
and again would just be a sign of even
better things to come for the family
financially
and so in 1927 the family moved to
riverdale new york and some of their
reasons for moving there as i mentioned
mr kennedy was finding that he was down
in new york quite a bit already for work
purposes
it made more sense just to kind of move
to new york
he would also say that he felt that as
an irish catholic there were times that
he felt
that he was left behind or that there
was stigma
and he was sometimes left out of the
social circles
uh in boston which in those times were a
bit different there was a lot of
friction
friction between the irish catholics
here in boston and the greater boston
area
and between some of the english
protestant families who had been here
for several generations
some of those animosities were coming
over from the old country
and came about in boston and so mr
kennedy felt at times that he had been
held back by those things
in many ways he didn't want his family
to perhaps go through the same things
and he would say that was one of his
reasons for also moving the family
to new york which was a bigger city and
where he felt the family could more sort
of easily assimilate into
new york society and so mrs kennedy
she was very reluctant to move to
brookline in the first place
but she was then very reluctant to move
out of brookline
13 years later she realized that this
was a great town
a great place to raise a family and
everything was in such close proximity
to both of their houses that it was
really difficult for her to let this go
and so we're back here at 83 beale
street again the jfk
birth place and of all the sites that we
visited today on the tour this is
actually the only site that's part of
the national park service and managed by
it it's one of 419 national park units
to date and it's the third smallest site
and so this is a unit of the national
park service as i mentioned
the kennedy family moved out of here in
1920
and so what happened to the house after
that well three other families would
live in the home
between the time that the family moved
out
and the time that the house was
repurchased by the kennedy family
and so after president kennedy's
assassination the house was
bought back by the family and turned
into a museum by the president's mother
and for over 50 years we've now managed
this site and interpreted it as well
but what i think is really interesting
in the early 1960s there was a woman
living here named martha pollock
and when kennedy was president she
actually wrote a letter to him
saying hey i'm living in your birthplace
home isn't that pretty cool
and interestingly he wrote back and i'd
like to share with you that letter now
he wrote dear mrs pollock having just
returned from ireland the birthplace of
so many of my forbearers
and having seen the homes in which
several of them lived so many years ago
it gives me special pleasure to extend
my warm good wishes
to you and your son alvin j clark who
now own the home on beale street in
brookline where i was born
there is within each man a very special
affection for the place of his birth
and i am deeply pleased to know that you
are living a full and enjoyable life
at my birthplace i hope you will
continue to do so
for many years to come with every good
wish to you
and all who visit you sincerely john
f kennedy and what i really find
fascinating
with this letter is it's dated july 11
1963
and as you may know just a few months
later jfk was assassinated in dallas
texas
and so it's very interesting to think
about at the very end of his life
jfk was thinking it back to the very
beginnings of his life
here in brookline