Kitchen

Two domestic servants - a maid-of-all-work and nanny - spent much of their time in the kitchen.

NPS / Robert Perron

Quick Facts

Location:

83 Beals Street, Brookline, MA

This was a comfortable home for the newlywed Kennedys in 1914. In the kitchen, you see that the family enjoyed many of the basic comforts that we enjoy today: radiator heat, hot and cold running water, electricity, and electric lighting. The large stove could be fueled by either gas or coal.

Looking back in the 1960s, Rose Kennedy remembered:

With all the baby bottles to be sterilized, formulas to prepare, and meals to cook, this kitchen was a very busy place.

The cleaning, preparing, and cooking was done by two servants - a maid-of-all-work and a children's nurse. Mrs. Kennedy also remembered that she often found her son Jack in their kitchen after meals, receiving extra food from the cook. She was very strict about mealtimes and she didn’t allow her other children to do this. However, with Jack often being sickly and underweight she didn’t mind him getting these extra bits of food as a way of keeping some weight on him.

In this room, she remembered looking out the windows to see the children in the “warm spring sun” and “building snowmen in the winter.” She also said that she was very happy when she lived here and although the family, “did not know about the days ahead, they were enthusiastic and optimistic about the future.”