📍Hammersmith Farm, 225 Harrison Avenue, Newport, RI 02840, USA
1942 – 1953“After my parents' divorce, my mother married Hugh Auchincloss in 1942, and my sister Lee and I gained a new family and two new homes: Merrywood, on the Potomac in Virginia, and Hammersmith Farm in Newport, Rhode Island. Hammersmith was a working farm on the shore of Narragansett Bay, with pastures running down to the water, cows, chickens and horses, and a rambling shingled house full of step-siblings and cousins. We spent our summers there, and they were some of the happiest days of my youth. I was a horse-mad girl, and I rode almost every day, as I had done since I was small. I loved the sea, the light on the bay and the sound of the boats, and I spent hours reading, writing poems and drawing. I went to Miss Porter's School in Connecticut and then to Vassar, and spent a year studying in Paris, which gave me a lifelong love of French art and language. Back in Newport I learned the art of quiet observation and of making a home beautiful, which served me well later. In 1953 I married John F. Kennedy at St. Mary's Church in Newport, and our wedding reception was held at Hammersmith Farm, with more than a thousand guests on the lawns overlooking the water. During Jack's presidency, Hammersmith Farm became known as the Summer White House, and we came back with our children to sail and rest. The farm's lawns, its view of the bay and its horses remained, for me, the picture of home.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today