Stop 5: The Brookline Library

299 Harvard Street
Brookline, MA 02446

When JFK lived in Brookline, he was a sickly child. Without modern forms of entertainment, young Jack would turn to books for entertainment when he was sick, becoming a lifelong reader. Jack went to the local Brookline library for reading material. At this time, it was located here, at 299 Harvard Street. The town of Brookline purchased this land and building, which looked like a home, for seventeen thousand five hundred dollars in 1915, moving to its next location in 1927, the year that the Kennedys moved to New York. At the time, the children’s level was on the first floor, so that the librarians could supervise them carefully. Young Jack would have used this location, which is of course today a commercial space, possibly walking with his mother and siblings from his Beals Street home.