It'll be 62 years next month that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. If the 35th President of the USA were alive today, he'd be 108 years old. Yet the mystique around JFK and the Kennedys still commands attention even today, and it's not hard to see why: the young, handsome, and twinkly-eyed president, who lived a colourful life alongside one of the world's most photographed women, tragically cut short in his prime. So when one of his former homes comes up for sale, it's news — especially when it's as handsome a home as this $7.5 million red-brick townhouse in Washington DC's charming Georgetown neighbourhood.
The Kennedys moved to the house in late 1957 while JFK was still a senator. 'It was the couple’s first owned home in the city,' the agents relate. 'It was a setting for young family life and rising national political ambitions.' Coincidentally, at the exact same time in London, Margaret Thatcher and her husband Dennis bought their first house: a family home in Bromley which they apparently found in Country Life.
Unlike the Thatcher's home in the suburbs of south-east London, the Kennedys' Georgetown house had a long history in politics, having originally been built in 1811 for William Marbury, a key figure in the early legal history of the USA.
A century and a half later Kennedy and his team used the house as an unofficial nerve centre in the 1960 presidential election campaign. It was from here that president-elect John F. Kennedy left for his inauguration on 20 January, 1961; later that day, he moved in to the White House, which would be his final home.
The house's owners since then have done an admirable job of keeping this five bedroom, 5,215 sq ft home in superb shape, while keeping its sense of history alive. It is a house, according to TTR Sotheby's International Realty agent Michael Rankin, that 'offers what sophisticated buyers prize most: architectural integrity, enduring materials, large gardens spaces, ample parking and a storied address at the core of Georgetown’s village life.'
'It is a home that has hosted statesmen and young families alike,' Mr Rankin continues, 'where measured elegance frames modern living and where every arrival walks through a doorway shared by figures who shaped American history.'
3307N Street NW, Washington DC, is for sale at $7.5 million via TTR Sotheby's International Realty — see more details.
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