Today we left the RV at Congregation Beth Israel and drove to the Brookline area to visit three NPS locations.  The first was Longfellow House–Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, a house occupied by George Washington from 1775 to 1776 and the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from 1837 to 1882:

The grounds include a small formal garden:

The house was owned by the Longfellow family until it was given to the Park Service in 1972.  All of the furnishings in the home are original.  Longfellow and his children were quite the collectors:

The mirror on the left was in the house in Washington’s time, and was too heavy to move when the room was re-wallpapered in the 19th century, so behind the mirror the original 18th century wallpaper remains:

Longfellow’s study, where many of his poems were written:

Longfellow wrote a poem titled The Village Blacksmith which mentions a particular chestnut tree near his house.  When the tree needed to be cut down to build a road, local children presented Longfellow with this chair in 1879, made from the tree mentioned in the poem.  Longfellow in turn wrote the poem From my Arm-Chair regarding the chair:

At the window seat in the center of the photo, Mrs. Longfellow’s dress caught on fire, fatally burning her:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Our next stop was Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.  This site is the home and office of Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture in the US, known for his designs of Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, among many other parks and gardens.  He also was involved in the establishment of public lands set aside for preservation and conservation, authoring Yosemite and the Mariposa Grove: A Preliminary Report in 1865:

We explored the Olmstead-designed landscape around the home:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

After having lunch at a local pizza place, we visited John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, where JFK was born and lived for the first few years of his life:

The Kennedy family sold the house in 1920.  JFK’s mother Rose Kennedy purchased the house back in 1966 and restored it to represent what she recalled the home to look like when the Kennedy family lived there.  About 20% of the artifacts in the home were owned by the Kennedy family:

JFK was born in this room:

The kids completed their Junior Ranger workbooks and received their badges:

Good Shabbos from Congregation Beth Israel in Malden, Massachusetts!