The Kennedy family are perhaps the closest thing the U.S. has to royalty. And so when one of their estates changes hands, there’s bound to be serious money involved. In this case, the figure is a mind-bending $70 million, the sky-high amount for which the family’s former Palm Beach compound — often referred to as JFK’s Winter White House — was recently sold in a clandestine private deal to an inscrutable blind trust managed by West Palm Beach attorney Maura Ziska, according to The Real Deal.
Famously, this house was where President John F. Kennedy worked on his 1961 inaugural address. However, the Kennedy clan were not the most recent owners. That title belongs to Jane Goldman, who herself comes from a very rich and prominent East Coast family. Her late father, Sol Goldman, was at one time one of New York’s biggest landlords; according to Forbes, Ms. Goldman’s net worth is in the heady neighborhood of $3.1 billion.
Designed by famed high-society architect Addison Mizner and built in 1925, the Kennedy family first purchased the more than 11,000-square-foot mansion in 1933, when Joseph P. Kennedy, father of John, Robert and Ted, acquired the estate for $120,000 for use as a winter vacation home. The slightly-more-than an acre compound includes a total of seven bedrooms and 11.5 bathrooms, plus a pool and tennis court.
Ted Kennedy often used the property and in 1991 it became the scene of an alleged rape by a nephew of the former president. The 1995 sale to private equity boss John Castle of Castle Harlan for $4.92 million was “wholly unrelated” to the incited, a Kennedy spokesperson said at the time. Jane Goldman, who runs Solil Management, brought the property from Castle in 2015 for $31 million and undertook an extensive renovation of the Mediterranean style residence, hiring interior designers Pembroke and Ives to handle the project, according to Architectural Digest. The latest renovation mixes both brighter Miami pastel blues with softer cream and grays. The furnishings and artwork are distinctly modern and tasteful emitting a relaxed, understated and airy feel.
