Young Jacqueline Bouvier, 125 E 74th Street, and John “Black Jack” Bouvier
After her parents Janet Lee Bouvier and John “Black Jack” Vernou Bouvier III divorced in 1940 when she was aged 11, Jacqueline Bouvier and her younger sister Caroline (known as Lee) divided their time between their parents homes in New York, Virginia and the Hamptons…
See the Bouvier family’s previous home at 740 Park Avenue:
About John “Black Jack” Vernou Bouvier
Now divorced, the stockbroker and womanising socialite Jack Bouvier (1891–1957) moved into a bachelor pad in Lenox Hill at 125 East 74th Street, New York.
Lt Jack Bouvier III
Jack was the eldest of five children born to Major John Vernou Bouvier Jr (1865—1948), a lawyer, and Maude Frances Sergeant (1870—1940).
He was a notorious gambler, alcoholic and philanderer, who had studied at Yale University, and spent time in the US Navy and Army, with the bulk of his career on Wall Street as a stockbroker.
John Vernou Bouvier III, his daughter Jacqueline Bouvier,
and his father John Vernou Bouvier Jr in the early 1940s
Maude Sergeant Bouvier, grandmother to Jackie Bouvier
Kennedy, and mother of John Vernou Bouvier III
One of his siblings was Edith Ewing Bouvier Beale (1895–1977), who with her daughter, Edith Bouvier Beale (1917–2002) were known as “Big Edie” and “Little Edie”.
Learn more about this eccentric couple from the famous 1975 Grey Gardens documentary, a Tony-award winning stage musical, and the 2009 film, Grey Gardens, starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore.
Big Edie and Little Edie Bouvier Beale, the aunt and cousin,
respectively, of Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis
Jackie and Lee grow up
In the early years of Jack Bouvier’s residency at 125 East 74th Street, young Jacqueline became a teenager and went away to school.
August 1934: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as a child riding a pony
led by her father John Vernou Bouvier III
Previously, she had been at the Chapin School in New York City for first through sixth grade, and now moved on to the Holton-Arms School in Bethesda, Maryland (1942-1944) and then Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Connecticut (1944-1947).
Jackie and Lee Bouvier as young ladies with
their father John “Black Jack” Bouvier
Later, she attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, then the Sorbonne in Paris and University of Grenoble in Grenoble, France, and George Washington University in Washington DC.
She went on, of course, to famously marry John “Jack” Fitzgerald Kennedy and later Aristotle Onassis, and had f0ur children of whom only two survived infancy:
- Arabella Kennedy
- Caroline Bouvier Kennedy
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr
- Patrick Bouvier Kennedy
Jacqueline Bouvier, seated, with her sister Caroline Lee Bouvier,
standing behind her, wearing ball gowns.
Her sister, Caroline “Lee” Bouvier, who went on to marry:
- Michael Temple Canfield (m. 1953–1959; annulled)
- Stanisław Albrecht Radziwiłł (m. 1959–1974; divorced)
- Herbert Ross (m. 1988–2001)
She had two children with her second husband:
Mrs. John F. Kennedy (formerly Jacqueline Bouvier) wearing a striped wool
sweater and Mrs. Michael T. Canfield (formerly Lee Bouvier) wearing
a white cotton sweater with strips on pocket and edge (from left).
Jack Bouvier had a complicated and largely spasmodic relationship with his daughters.
One of the most famous incidents occurred on the day of Jackie’s wedding to John F Kennedy in 1953.
Apparently Jackie was desperate for her father to walk her down the aisle, but when the time came he was too drunk (possibly at the encouragement of others under the instruction of Jackie’s angry mother, Janet Bouvier Auchincloss, his ex-wife, who was against the plan), and Jackie was escorted to the altar by her stepfather Hugh D Auchincloss.
The wedding of John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier 1953:
Jackie with her stepfather Hugh D Auchincloss
Further reading
Read more about Jackie’s father here, and more about Jackie, her sister Lee Radziwill, and the larger Bouvier and Kennedy families, via these books:
- The Bouviers: Portrait of an American Family by John H. Davis
- One Special Summer by Lee Bouvier and Jacqueline Bouvier
- Janet and Jackie: The Story of a Mother and Her Daughter, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis by Jan Pottker
- Jacqueline Bouvier: An Intimate Memoir by John H. Davis
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: A Life Beyond Her Wildest Dreams by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince
- All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy by Edward Klein
- Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster by John H. Davis
- Happy Times by Lee Radziwill
- In Her Sister’s Shadow: An Intimate Biography of Lee Radziwill by Diana Dubois
- Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: The Untold Story by Barbara Leaming
About 125 East 74th Street
Built in 1928-29, the 10-floor, 20-unit building with a three-story limestone base is on a beautiful tree lined block between Park and Lexington.
It comes with a canopied entrance, doorman, private storage, laundry and bike room, and wood-burning fireplaces. It was converted to a cooperative in 1953.
The bachelor pad included two bedrooms (or one bedroom and a library) – one room for Jack, and a twin room for the girls, Jacqueline and Caroline, known as “Lee”, to share.
Modern day one-bedroom apartments in the building come at a cost of around $1.25 million.
Whilst I can’t find any photos of the apartment during the time the Bouviers lived there, here are some more recent examples:
See more examples of floor plans from the building here.
And learn more about East 74th Street here.
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Cheers, Natasha
www.myLusciousLife.com
