John F. Kennedy Birthplace
Brookline, MA
The house located at 83 Beals Street in the Coolidge Corner neighborhood of Brookline, Massachusetts in the birthplace of our 35th and youngest President. The homes architectural style is classified as Colonial Revival. It was purchased by Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Sr. on August 20th, 1914 and the Kennedy's second son, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born in the master bedroom, on the second floor, on May 29, 1917. He spent the formative years of his childhood in the middle-class neighborhood. Kennedy's legacy is said to have brought a new optimism and idealism to politics, particularly among young people. His Alliance for Process and Peace Corps extended that idealism to helping developing countries. Though an assassin's bullet ended Kennedy's life in Dallas in November, 1963, before the realizations of many of his far-reaching reform initiatives, his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, continued his lives work with passage of the Civil Rights bills and voting rights law, federal aid to education and Medicare, and the statute creating a cabinet-level housing and urban development department as a fulfillment of Kennedy's promise of hope and process. The property is now owned by the National Park Service and after extensive renovations will be open to the public to enjoy once more.