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- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis lived in luxurious homes throughout the East Coast.
- She spent her childhood summers in mansions in the Hamptons, New York, and Rhode Island.
- Photos show the impressive homes she lived in and owned in her lifetime.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis grew up in spacious New York apartments and several-acre estates, and, after her marriage, spent summers at the famed Kennedy Compound and winters on the family’s estate in Palm Beach.
Still, she said her family’s “happiest years” were those spent with her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in the White House.
While most of her former homes can only be admired from the outside, one of her final properties is now open to visitors.
Parts of what was once known as Red Gate Farm on Martha’s Vineyard opened to the public this summer, The Vineyard Gazette reported in June. Two public trails meander through the land, which was sold by the Kennedy family to two nonprofits in 2020 and is now known as Squibnocket Pond Reservation.
Here are all of the impressive places she lived in and owned in her lifetime.
Before she was a Kennedy or an Onassis, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier spent her early years in New York City.
In 1932, the Bouviers moved into an apartment on the sixth and seventh floors of 740 Park Avenue.
The apartment building was developed by her grandfather, James T. Lee, The New York Times reported. At least for a period, her father couldn’t afford to furnish it so Jackie and her sister could roller skate from room to room, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The apartment building later became a home for billionaires and was once considered one of the most iconic apartment buildings in the city.
In 2017, her old apartment sold for $25.25 million.
In the 1940s, Bouvier’s mother remarried, and they left New York.
They moved into a Georgian-style mansion called “Merrywood” in McLean, Virginia, in Washington, DC.
The 23,000-square-foot mansion, which was built in 1919, had nine bedrooms and 13 bathrooms.
Bouvier’s mother had married an oil magnate named Hugh D. Auchincloss, who owned the mansion.
The home sits on the edge of the Potomac River and has an extensive garden.
Bouvier wrote fondly about the house in her diary, saying, “I always love it so at Merrywood — so peaceful … with the river and those great steep hills.”
Bouvier spent her summers at her paternal grandfather’s East Hampton estate.
The 8,500-square-foot home, which was built in 1917, is called “Lasata,” which means “place of peace,” in the native Algonquian language.
In 2023, fashion designer Tom Ford bought it for $52 million, The Wall Street Journal reported.
She also spent some of her summers at her maternal grandfather’s house in East Hampton called “Wildmoor.”
The 18th-century home, covering about 5,700 square feet, was a shingle-and-clapboard wooden house with a view of fields, a swamp, and the sea, per the WSJ.
In 2021, the house was sold for $6.8 million.
Her next notable property was the Kennedy family’s summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.
Joseph Kennedy Sr., John F. Kennedy’s father, bought a white-shingled cottage in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in 1928 for $25,000, or about $470,000 today. The coastal Massachusetts cottage became the Kennedy family’s home base for years to come.
Before they married, Bouvier and John F. Kennedy spent time together there.
It later became known as the “Kennedy Compound.”
In 1953, Bouvier became a Kennedy when the couple married in Newport, Rhode Island.
They had the wedding reception at her mother’s husband’s sprawling estate, known as “Hammersmith Farm,” anchored by a grand, 28-room Victorian-era mansion.
The property was last sold in 1999 for just over $8 million.
The estate became a part-time summer home for the Kennedys, along with the Kennedy Compound.
Jackie Kennedy spent summers on the estate during her childhood, and the Kennedys later vacationed there in the summer of 1961.
In 1953, not long after the Kennedys were married, they rented a four-story, four-bedroom house in Washington, DC.
The Kennedys lived there for almost two years.
They enjoyed throwing dinner parties and spending time in its back gardens.
The house, which was built in the 1940s, is about 3,000 square feet.
It last sold for $4 million in April 2025.
Two years later, in 1955, the Kennedys moved to “Hickory Hill,” another Georgian-style house.
The home was built in 1815 and had a tennis court, a pool, and 12 fireplaces on a 5.6-acre plot in McLean, Virginia.
They bought it from Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, The Washington Post reported.
Two years later, the Kennedys sold it for $250,000 to John’s brother, Robert, who would end up raising his own family there.
Jackie didn’t want to go back after her daughter was stillborn.
Robert Kennedy was at the house when he heard John had been assassinated, the Baltimore Sun reported. He spent an hour alone, walking around the estate.
In 1956, the Kennedys bought a summer home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, right beside the original Kennedy summer home.
The 4,484-square-foot clapboarded home sat on less than an acre of land and soon became part of the “Kennedy Compound.”
They spent $45,948 on the house, The Wall Street Journal reported.
In 1957, the Kennedys bought an 18th-century brick row house in Georgetown for $82,000.
Jackie spent about $18,000 on remodeling it, and she decorated the house with armchairs and good porcelain.
Her husband campaigned and was elected president during their years here, Architectural Digest reported.
Though not a property she owned, Jackie lived in the White House with her family during her husband’s presidency from 1961 to 1963.
She later described this period as her family’s “happiest years,” The Daily Beast reported.
While they were living in the White House, they spent winters at her father-in-law Joseph Kennedy’s Palm Beach estate.
The Palm Beach estate became known as the Kennedys’ “winter White House.” In 2020, the house sold for $70 million and underwent extensive renovations by the new owner.
In 1963, after her husband was assassinated, Jackie and her children left the White House and moved into an 18th-century home in DC.
She paid around $175,000 for the five-bedroom house but only lived there for about a year. It was too public, and she reportedly became overwhelmed with all of the tourists.
In 2017, it was purchased for $5.25 million.
Jackie Kennedy owned the apartment until she died in 1994.
It was bought from her estate in 1995 for $9.2 million.
The buyer said she hadn’t done much upkeep, and they ended up gutting the whole apartment.
While she was alive, she began dividing her time between France, Greece, Martha’s Vineyard, and New Jersey.
She kept New York as a home base.
She also got married again in 1968 to a Greek shipping magnate named Aristotle Onassis and became Jackie Onassis, or “Jackie O.”
In 1974, she purchased a country home — a converted barn on almost 10 acres — for $200,000 in Peapack, New Jersey.
She liked the area for its natural beauty and space for horse riding, The New York Times reported.
She knew the area well because she had previously rented a farmhouse described by The Times as a “badly made-over barn” in Bernardsville since 1965.
After she bought the property, she painted it yellow with white trim.
After her death, a neighbor and friend bought the property for $1.47 million in 1997.
The neighbor, Marjorie McDonnell Walsh, told The Wall Street Journal they tore the house down.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said when declining to share details about the new house. “The much more important thing is we both love the property. It’s a private valley. It’s beautiful.”
In 1979, after her second husband died, Jackie decided to build a new house called “Red Gate Farm,” on 340 acres of land in Martha’s Vineyard.
She reportedly spent a little more than $1 million on the land, and then another $3.1 million on building the house, which was finished in 1981.
The main building covers 6,456 square feet. There’s also a four-bedroom guest house, a pool, and a tennis court. The property stretches across a mile of beach.
In 2020, the estate was put up for sale for $65 million.
Two nonprofits, the Martha’s Vineyard Land Bank and Sheriff’s Meadow Foundation, bought 304 acres of the land for $27 million, the Vineyard Gazette reported. It is now known as Squibnocket Pond Reservation, and members of the public can walk on trails that cut through the land.
The Kennedy family stills own 65 acres of the estate, including the home, per the Vineyard Gazette.
Editor’s note: This story was first published in September 2023 and was most recently updated in September 2025 with additional information.
Read the full article here
