Celebrating John F. Kennedy’s Centennial

The Brookline, Mass., home where President John F. Kennedy was born is run by the National Park Service and is open to the public from mid-May through October. Photo courtesy of Flickr contributor Wally Gobetz

Commemorations marking the centennial of John F. Kennedy’s birth (the 35th president would have turned 100 May 29) are ongoing across the country all this year. Kennedy had deep ties to Boston: he was born in Brookline and lived on Beacon Hill when he served in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum overlooks Boston Harbor. Bostonians can celebrate JFK’s life and legacy with a series of special events.

First off is JFK’s birthplace, 83 Beals St., Brookline, just off Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner. The Kennedy family lived in the three-story home from 1914 to 1920. The president’s parents, Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, moved into the wood-frame house as newlyweds, and by the time they left six years later, four of their nine children had been born there—Joseph, Jr., JFK, Rosemary, and Kathleen. (The growing family moved to a larger home in Brookline in 1920.)

The Kennedy family bought back the Beals Street house in 1966, three years after Kennedy’s assassination. In 1969, after a restoration supervised by Rose Kennedy, the property was given to the National Park Service, which continues to operate the National Historic Site today.

The house is comfortable, but far from palatial, with just three rooms on the ground floor. Only 20 percent of the furniture now in the house belonged to the Kennedys when they lived there; the rest are antiques provided by the family or bought during the refurbishing in the late ’60s. In the living room, visitors can see the baby grand piano that was given to Rose Kennedy as a wedding gift and played by a young JFK. Under the front window in the dining room are a small children’s table and two chairs, where JFK and his older brother, Joe, Jr., ate their meals as toddlers. Two small silver porringers, each engraved with their initials, sit atop the table.

Upstairs, visitors can peek into the master bedroom, where JFK was born on May 29, 1917. All of the clocks in the house are set to 3 p.m.—the time he was born. Across the hall is the small bedroom shared by JFK and Joe, Jr. The bassinet and christening gown used by all the Kennedy children are on display here, as well as several children’s books that belonged to the future president. Often sick as a child, he became an avid reader at a young age.

Presidential history buffs will also want to check out the special centennial exhibition at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, in Dorchester. JFK: 100 Milestones & Mementos offers a fascinating selection of objects—the majority drawn from the library’s collections—chronicling significant moments in the president’s personal life and professional life. Items reflect both the arc of his life and the decades he lived in. Among them are a scrapbook JFK compiled as a high school students at Choate in 1934-1935, a flag from PT 109, the boat, torpedoed by a Japanese destroyer, he commanded during World War II, notes he took for his landmark address to the country on civil rights in 1963, and personal items on display for the first time, including his sunglasses and gifts from his young children.

The John F. Kennedy National Historic Site, 83 Beals St., Brookline, Mass., is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Sundays from May 19 through October 31. Guided tours are offered on the half hour starting at 9:30 a.m. and last about 30 minutes. From noon to 1 p.m. and 4 to 5 p.m. visitors can take a self-guided tour via cell phone, narrated by the president’s mother, Rose Kennedy. Admission is free. More information is available here.

JFK: 100 Milestones & Mementos is on view at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Columbia Point, Boston, through May 31, 2018. Find hours, admission, and directions here.