Hammersmith Farm

Hammersmith Farm is a Victorian mansion and estate located at 225 Harrison Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, United States. It was the childhood home of First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, and the site of the reception for her 1953 wedding to U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy. During his presidency, it was referred to as the "Summer White House".

History

Hammersmith Farm's 28-room main house was built in 1887 for John W. Auchincloss, the great-grandfather of Hugh D. Auchincloss (1897–1976), Jacqueline Kennedy's stepfather. It was erected on what had been originally known as "Hammersmith Island," possibly named after the English hometown of William Brenton, the 17th-century governor of Rhode Island who established the first farm on the site in 1640.

Summer White House

During a stay at Hammersmith in late September 1961, President Kennedy announced that John McCone would become the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Post-presidency

The main house remained in the Auchincloss family until the 1976 death of Hugh Auchincloss. Janet Lee Bouvier Auchincloss (1907–1989), Jacqueline Kennedy's mother, sold the main house and moved into a guesthouse on the farm, built to resemble a windmill. A group of investors bought main house in 1977, and opened it for public tours and special events. Fruit of the Loom executive William F. Farley bought it in 1997 for $6.675 million.

Hammersmith

Coordinates: 51°29′34″N 0°13′22″W / 51.4928°N 0.2229°W / 51.4928; -0.2229

Hammersmith is a district in west London, England, located in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. It is bordered by Shepherds Bush to the north, Kensington to the east, Chiswick to the west, and Fulham to the south, with which it forms part of the north bank of the River Thames. It is linked by Hammersmith Bridge to Barnes in the southwest. The area is one of west London's key commercial and employment centres, and has for some decades been the main centre of London's Polish minority. It is a major transport hub for west London, with two London Underground stations and a bus station at Hammersmith Broadway.

Neighbouring districts

History

In the early 1660s, Hammersmith's first parish church, which later became St Paul’s, was built by Sir Nicholas Crispe who ran the brickworks in Hammersmith. It contained a monument to Crispe as well as a bronze bust of King Charles I by Hubert Le Sueur. In 1696 Sir Samuel Morland was buried there. The church was completely rebuilt in 1883, but the monument and bust were transferred to the new church.

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly referred to by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. The Cuban Missile Crisis, The Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the establishment of the Peace Corps, developments in the Space Race, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Civil Rights Movement, the "New Frontier" domestic program,and abolition of the federal death penalty in the District of Columbia all took place during his presidency. Kennedy also avoided any significant increase in the American presence in Vietnam, refusing to commit combat troops and keeping the level of others, mostly military advisors, to only 16,000, compared to the 536,000 troops committed by his successor, Lyndon Johnson, by 1968.

Kennedy's time in office is also marked by high tensions with Communist states, particularly Cuba. An attempt in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the country's dictator, Fidel Castro, was thwarted by armed forces within three days. His administration subsequently rejected plans by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to orchestrate false-flag attacks on American soil in order to gain public approval for a war against Cuba. In October 1962, it was discovered Soviet ballistic missiles had been deployed in Cuba; the resulting period of unease, often termed the Cuban Missile Crisis, is seen by many historians as the closest the human race has ever come to war featuring the use of nuclear weapons on both or multiple sides.

Newport, Rhode Island

Newport is a seaside city on Aquidneck Island in Newport County, Rhode Island, United States. The City of Newport is located approximately 37 miles (60 km) south-east of Providence, 21 miles (34 km) south of Fall River, and 74 miles (119 km) south of Boston. Known as a New England summer resort and for the famous Newport Mansions, it is the home of Salve Regina University and Naval Station Newport which houses the United States Naval War College, the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, and a major United States Navy training center. A major 18th-century port city, Newport now contains among the highest number of surviving colonial buildings of any city in the United States.

The city is the county seat of Newport County (a county that no longer has any governmental functions other than court administrative and sheriff corrections boundaries). Newport was known for being the city of some of the "Summer White Houses" during the administrations of Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. The population was 24,027 as of 2013.

Rhode Island

Rhode Island (ⁱ/ˌroʊdˈaɪlənd/, officially the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, is a state in the New England region of the United States. Rhode Island is the smallest in area, the eighth least populous, and the second most densely populated (behind New Jersey) of the 50 U.S. states; its official name is also the longest of any state in the Union. Rhode Island is bordered by Connecticut to the west, Massachusetts to the north and east, and the Atlantic Ocean (via Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound) to the south.

On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island became the first of the Thirteen Colonies to renounce its allegiance to the British Crown, and later, was the fourth to ratify—February 9, 1778—the Articles of Confederation between the newly sovereign states. It boycotted the 1787 convention that drew up the United States Constitution, and initially refused to ratify it. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island became the thirteenth and last state to ratify the Constitution.