Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy, listed her mother’s Red Gate Farm on Martha’s Vineyard for $65 million.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis bought the property for about $1 million in 1979, more than 15 years after the assassination of the nation’s 35th president and four years after her second husband, Aristotle Onassis, had died.
Caroline, who was five days shy of her sixth birthday when her father was assassinated in 1963, said the former sheep farm became a sanctuary for her mother. At first, the only structure was a cabin built in the nineteenth century. In the early 1980s the former first lady built a house from blueprints drawn by architect Hugh Newell Jacobson. The landscape was designed by Bunny Mellon, the horticulturist who created the White House Rose Garden.
“When she found Red Gate Farm, it was a perfect expression of her romantic and adventurous spirit,” Kennedy said in a statement provided by Christie’s International Real Estate, which is handling the sale locally through Tom LeClair and Gery Conover, agents of LandVest. “The dunes and ponds and rolling hills of Aquinnah gave her the chance to create a world where she could be so close to nature, close to her family and friends, and, most importantly, close to her beloved books.”
The 6,456-square-foot home has five bedrooms and five full baths. It’s set on 340 acres that include grass-swept sand dunes and more than a mile of private beach near the famed Cliffs of Gay Head. In 2000, six years after the death of her mother, Caroline Kennedy commissioned Deborah Berke, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, to renovate and expand the main residence.
The goal of the renovation was to retain her mother’s “understated, timeless elegance,” according to the listing.
The property includes a Shingle-style guest house with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a living room, kitchen, and laundry room.
When Jackie's grandchildren were young, she had a "fairy treehouse" built, that's still on the property.
"Those grandchildren are grown, so now it is time for us to follow my mother's example and create our own worlds," Kennedy said. "We hope that a new family will treasure this place as we have for three generations. We are excited about the next chapter for Red Gate Farm."
Here are pictures of the main house and the fairy tree house, from the brokerage:
