Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ Martha’s Vineyard estate goes on market for $65M
Red Gate Farm, once owned by former first lady Jackie Kennedy Onassis, hit the market for $65 million. (Christie’s International Real Estate)
Jackie Kennedy Onassis’ oceanfront estate on Martha’s Vineyard along the New England coastline is up for sale.
The former first lady’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, placed the 340-acre property on the market for $65 million, 40 years after Onassis purchased the land and turned it into her summer home and escape from celebrity life, according to Christie’s International Real Estate, which is listing the compound. Called the Red Gate Farm, the estate includes a five-bedroom house, a two-story guest house with four bedrooms and other amenities such as a pool and tennis court.
“Forty years ago, my mother fell in love with Martha’s Vineyard. When she found Red Gate Farm, it was a perfect expression of her romantic and adventurous spirit,” Caroline Kennedy said in a news release Thursday announcing the property listing. “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. She even built a fairy treehouse for her grandchildren.”
Kennedy said she’s putting the compound her mother loved on the market so another family can make new memories there.
“Now it is time for us to follow my mother’s example and create our own worlds. 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,” Kennedy said.
Red Gate Farm's 6,456-square-foot main house was designed by Hugh Newell Jacobson. (Christie’s International Real Estate)
The estate sits on over a mile of Atlantic Ocean beachfront near the Cliffs of Gay Head.
When Onassis purchased the land, it was a former sheep farm with a small hunting cabin. She hired American architect Hugh Newell Jacobson, who designed the 6,456-square-foot main house, and her friend Rachel Bunny Mellon — who redesigned the White House’s Rose Garden when President John F. Kennedy was in office — to layout the estate’s landscape.
The main house was completed in 1981, and by 2000, Onassis’ daughter had Deborah Berke, Dean of the Yale School of Architecture, renovate and expand the structure.
The fairy treehouse built for her grandchildren still stands on the property today.
“The ancillary structures include a three-bedroom caretaker's house, a barn, two garages (one with a two-bedroom apartment), a temperature-controlled storage building, and a boathouse,” the property’s listing stated.
If Red Gate Farm sells for close to its $65 million asking price, it would break the record for a single-family estate on Martha’s Vineyard.
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The estate once owned by former Washington Post publisher Katherine Graham currently holds the record after the property sold for $32.5 million in January, the Vineyard Gazette reported. That estate was listed in August 2018 for $39.5 million.
Christie’s International Real Estate is represented by Tom LeClair and Gery Conover, agents of LandVest, the affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate on Martha’s Vineyard.