Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s Childhood Home Is on Sale for $49.5 Million
By Hilary Weaver. Photos: Getty Images.
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis grew up in McLean, Virginia, an affluent neighborhood of Washington, D.C., in a stately Georgian-style mansion called Merrywood. The Bouvier family moved into the home after the future First Lady's mother married the Standard Oil heir Hugh D. Aucincloss, who owned the expansive property. The home, which looks over the Potomac River, is currently on the market for $49.5 million, per Curbed.
“I always love it so at Merrywood—so peaceful . . . with the river and those great steep hills,” Bouvier wrote in 1944, when she was a teenager, per Town & Country.
The 23,000 square-foot home, which was built in 1919, has nine bedrooms, 13 bathrooms, and several common rooms. Merrywood has rolling lawns, formal gardens, garden rooms, and a swimming pool. The seven private acres also host a tennis court and a pavilion with indoor lap pool, gym, and changing rooms.
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Onassis’s stepfather was also the father of American writer Gore Vidal, who lived in the home, too, albeit not at the same time as Onassis. As journalist John Dickerson noted in The New York Times in 2006, it was here that Vidal set his novel, Washington, D.C.
Later, Dickerson’s parents, Washington mainstays C. Wyatt Dickerson, a businessman, and his wife, Nancy, a reporter for CBS and NBC, called Merrywood home. There, the Dickersons would entertain such guests as Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Jack Benny, and Kirk Douglas.
“For my parents, it was a grand stage for Washington socializing,” John wrote of his childhood home. “For my brother, Michael, who is five years older, and me, it was a freewheeling paradise.”
The home previously sold for $24.5 million to America Online co-founder Steve Case in 2005. Per Curbed, if the home sells at its asking price of $49.5 million, it would be the most expensive property to sell in the area.
This story originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
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