Jackie's NJ Farm

By Steve Brawley

Beginning in 1965, Mrs. Kennedy began to spend weekends with her children about an hour from New York in the heart of New Jersey hunt country. The family rented and then bought a simple home in Peapack, New Jersey - a converted barn in a valley which was ideally situated for riding and fox hunting.

The rambling yellow house with white trim was once a sheep barn and featured a meadow and a hill.

A keen horsewoman since her early childhood, Mrs. Kennedy soon joined the Essex Hunt, which was established in 1870 and incorporated in Peapack in 1913. The layout of the house was centered around a large room used as the living room and dining room. In addition to several bedrooms upstairs, there was also a library filled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases as well as an area off the kitchen where riding boots and tack were kept.

In 1975, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis auctioned off odds and ends from a house she had rented in Peapack, N.J. The sale, which included a chair used by the late President Kennedy as a student at Choate, brought in a few thousand dollars.

Onassis bought the Peapack farm house, a ten-acre estate nearby, and used it as a retreat until she died in 1994. The home was sold in 1997 for a little under $1.5 million. While it was torn down in 2000, it lives on in at least one sense. Last month, Caroline Kennedy's auction of family goods, including table linens and pillows from the country house, brought in $5.5 million.

A Provincial Paneled Pine Wall Cupboard (lot 389, est. $2/3,000) is among the furniture from the New Jersey residence that was offered. Also included were a Pair of Bleached Wood Coffee Tables, 20th century (lots 410-411, est. $600/800 each); a lovely Pair of Wrought-and-Gilt Iron Wall-Mounted Pricket Sticks, with leaf-decorated scrolling arms (lot 408, est. $200/300); and a Painted Ribbed Pottery Lamp (lot 506, est. $100/150). Demonstrative of Mrs. Kennedy's passion for horses is a painting of The Hunting Party at Chantilly, by the Circle of Van der Muelen, which is estimated to sell for $15/20,000 (lot 409).

Residents of the Borough of Peapack and Gladstone in Somerset County, NH pride themselves on being nonchalant about the many celebrities who live in the borough and surrounding municipalities. Mayor Mary Hamilton said famous people were "not singled out and can remain as public or as private as they like here."

She does have a story about Aristotle Onassis, who rented a home in neighboring Bernardsville with his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

"He was an insomniac," Mrs. Hamilton said, "and he would go walking in the borough at 2 in the morning with no identification. To Mr. Onassis's embarrassment and to the embarrassment of the police chief, he was once taken in for questioning before his habits were known."

Peapack and Gladstone is in a rural New Jersey area of estates and horse farms of the wealthy. The King of Morocco is one of the borough's biggest landowners, and foxes are still hunted here.

After her death, eBay auctioned off an automobile once belonging to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Bidding for the vintage 1974 BMW Bavaria 3.0S began at $12,500 and ended with a final bid of $57,100.

A green sedan with tan leather interior and an odometer reading of 65,000 miles, the car is said to have been Onassis' favorite car. She used it exclusively to commute between her Manhattan apartment and her country estate in New Jersey until she sold it to her neighbor in Peapack, New Jersey.

The New Jersey Peapack Farm

This house has since been torn down. Sothebys Auction Photos Below

Peapack Entrance Hall

Peapack Living Room

Peapack Living Room

Peapack Den

Peapack Dining Room

One of Peapack's Bedrooms

The Peapack Pool (below from Flickr account of Chrisdans)

"Really. No kidding. This is me and Paula Cunha sitting beside the remarkably austere

swimming pool at Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' getaway in Peapack, NJ. This was shot

in the summer of 1980. My Portuguese Girlfriend and her parents were close friends

with Celestino Esteves, the caretaker of the estate. He and his family lived in a

small house of their own on the property, but when we visited we were able to use

all the facilities. This included sitting in her living room with 200 year old painted

french furniture and reading her numerous coffee table books. The house and decor

was surprisingly simple though, but thoroughly comfortable. It was a Colonial

that's actually smaller than the average McMansion Toll Brothers builds today.

The austerity is evidenced in the picture by the chicken wire fence surrounding the

very small pool.

I don't remember seeing any pictures of JFK or Ari Onassis on display, but there

were some cool pictures of Caroline and John Jr. riding horses in the area

where they kept their riding boots and caps."