When John F. and Jacqueline Kennedy moved in together for the first time as newlyweds, they rented a four-bedroom townhouse in Georgetown, with oak floors, huge windows, and an English-style back garden with a brick walkway and bright flower beds.
Now, for the first time, that house is about to hit the real estate market, having been kept in the owner’s family since it was built in 1942.
The list price is $2 million.
John and Jackie married on 12 September 1953, in Newport, Rhode Island.
It was the high-society event of the season, with more than 700 guests.
After they honeymooned in Mexico, Jackie, 24, stayed with her in-laws in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, while John, a 36-year-old freshman senator, visited on the weekends.
Jackie wasn’t a huge fan of the arrangement and was “anxious” to get a place of their own, according to Anne Garside in her book “Camelot at Dawn: Jacqueline and John Kennedy in Georgetown, May 1954.”
John’s secretary found the furnished rental at 3321 Dent Pl. NW in December 1953; the couple moved in just after the holidays, in January 1954.
Jackie was no newcomer to the Washington area. She had spent part of her childhood in the tony suburb of McLean, Virginia, and had been working as a photographer for the Washington Times-Herald when she met Kennedy in 1952.
According to Garside, John already had ambitions for the White House and welcomed any press attention, so when a photo agency suggested a spread on Jackie’s homemaking skills in the spring of 1954, he and Jackie readily agreed.
From May 4 to 9, photographer Orlando Suero took more than a thousand photos of the couple in their rented home, many of which ended up in the women’s magazine McCall’s.
In the photos, the house holds the couple like a warm embrace. Here, they lean side by side against a balcony railing; there, John relaxes with a book in the sunny backyard while Jackie tends the garden.
There are photos of Jackie coming down the stairs in a ballgown for a candlelit dinner party.
There are others showing her dressed “casually” in a plaid pencil skirt while talking on the phone in a second-floor bedroom and on the patio petting the dog.
Suero even captured the couple looking through their wedding photos together.
“The sessions reflected the image that the Kennedys themselves wished to project,” Garside wrote: glamorous, rich, young and powerful.
Even so, she wrote, a present-day reflection on all that would befall them makes them appear “strangely vulnerable” in the photos.
The Kennedys damaged a number of items in the home in only six months, leading to a large bill upon moving out — $385.49, or about $4,300 in today’s money.
The listing includes a photo of a letter from Jackie to her landlord Virginia Childs, reading:
After Dent Place, the Kennedys spent a few months at Jackie’s family home in McLean, where they experienced their first great trial as a couple.
John’s chronic back problems became so severe, he required a spinal-fusion operation and nearly died of a resulting infection. They spent time in Florida while he recovered.
When they returned to Washington, the couple moved to Hickory Hill in McLean.
It was there the Kennedys experienced another tragedy: In August 1956, their first child, Arabella, was stillborn.
The couple would later lose another child, Patrick, who died at 2 days old in 1963; months later, Kennedy was assassinated.
“Their stay in the house at Dent Place has received only passing mentions in books about the Kennedys,” Garside wrote. “Yet these few months in their first home were perhaps the only relatively normal time in J[ohn] and Jackie’s married life.”
After Kennedy’s assassination, Jackie moved temporarily to Georgetown again, this time to a sprawling mansion on N Street NW.
Incredibly, that property is also on the market.
At $2 million, the Dent Place home is by far the cheaper of the two. The one on N Street, which has been combined with two adjacent properties, is listed at $26.5 million.
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he misses you. he misses you like a flower misses the sun. like the desert misses the rain. like you are the entirety of his being. as if you hold the key to his fierce, thumping bloody heart within the palm of your hands, like he is nothing without you— and perhaps he isn't. he doesn't feel like himself, no, in fact, he feels empty. like a shell of the man he used to be before you. he feels as though the world has lost its color, its meaning, and it makes him feel bare— it makes him feel.
he misses you. he misses the warmth of your perfume, a sweet and spicy blended aroma of saffron and sugared lavender. he misses your smile, all wide and pretty— genuine and charming, and always all for him. he misses the sound of your laughter, raw and boisterous, but sometimes soft and breathy, intimate. he misses your kisses, shy and cloying— yet fierce and angry at times as well. he misses the small things, like the scatter of moles across the expanse of your body that he finds himself counting when he can't fall asleep. or the way you fuss over him, mumbling curses and your love for him all in the same sentence.
he is nothing without you, and he knows it all too well.
the soft jangle of your keys in the lock makes him look up from his journal, the door swinging open. and despite himself, he finds that he's softened underneath your warm, loving gaze. ah, he also misses the sound of your voice, euphonious and soft, a tone you use for him specifically.
❝why are you looking at me like that?❞
he can feel his heart dance within his chest, pounding fiercely as you slant your hip to the side, the very same hips he adores holding onto when swaying with you to music. your eyes, which always seem to sweep him under with their intensity with no fail, are glittering with mirth, it knocks the breath from his chest. ❝ i adore you,❞ he utters— he sounds like a fool in love, and he doesn't particularly mind it. your cheeks flush with color and you playfully roll your eyes. that's alright, you don't need to say it back, he knows.
❝help me with the groceries?❞
he? ⸺ SIMON, gojo satoru, DAMON SALVATORE, soap, older!TANJIRO, scott mccall, GAZ, clark kent, EMMETT CULLEN, leon kennedy, STEVE HARRINGTON, giyu tomioka, JOHN PRICE, loran, ULYSSES, rick grimes, KÖNIG, dick grayson, SPENCER REID.
honestly it can be anyone you envision.
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