The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation recently dug up the 1950 Census record listing for John F. Kennedy.
An image of the census page, which was posted on the library’s Twitter account Tuesday, shows John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby living at an address near the State House on Beacon Hill.
“JFK, then 32, listed his home as 122 Bowdoin St. in Boston, his official residence starting in 1947 when he ran for Congress,” the tweet said. “His brother Bobby, 24 and a full-time student, was the only other person listed in unit 36.”
Bobby Kennedy was in law school at the time. After graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1951, he would go on to have a successful career in politics, serving as the United States attorney general and as a US senator representing New York.
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John Kennedy’s occupation at the time was listed as “Congressman.”
More than a decade later — and after he was elected president — Kennedy’s arrival at that building on Bowdoin Street was chronicled in the pages of The Boston Globe.
The story was published on Jan. 9, 1961, and started like this:
John F. Kennedy walked into the tiny vestibule at 122 Bowdoin St. last night to be greeted by the neighbors who have watched his rise from congressional aspirant to President-elect.
“Hello Mary,” he said, clasping the hands of retired schoolteacher Mary Jenkins.
“Glad to see you,” was his greeting to another neighbor of 14 years.
Then, sardined between the burly bodies of Secret Service agents, plainclothes police and political and business friends, he was pushed up two steps toward the elevator. Building Supt. Joseph F. Murphy closed the elevator door and the great moment was over.
“He recognized me,” said Mary jubilantly. “He couldn’t forget the old maid schoolteacher upstairs.”
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Kennedy would be inaugurated as president 12 days later, on Jan. 20, 1961.
Kennedy biographer Ted Sorensen once wrote that Kennedy was rarely at the Bowdoin Street apartment when he wasn’t campaigning, and “the fact that several other Kennedys — and their families — for a time claimed the same three-room apartment (No. 36) as their voting address was a source of some amusement and sometimes irritation to local politicians.”
Emily Sweeney can be reached at emily.sweeney@globe.com. Follow her @emilysweeney and on Instagram @emilysweeney22.