Robert Schwerdtfeger acknowledged he could get in trouble, but he succumbed to the temptation.
“I have to sit on Kennedy’s massage table,” he said. “This will make a good selfie.”
The Deerfield Beach resident was among the hundreds of people who filled the Leslie Hindman Auctioneers showroom Saturday in West Palm Beach to bid on more than 153 items from the Kennedy family’s former Palm Beach home. More than 200 people bid live through the auction house’s website and by phone from locations around the world.
When the auctioneer’s hammer fell at $16,000, a man bidding at the showroom won a pair of Venetian-style walnut twin beds where future President John F. Kennedy slept alongside his brother Joe Kennedy Jr. The item’s entry in the auction’s glossy catalog includes a photo of a 20-year-old John F. Kennedy on one of the beds.
Someone won a pair of Venetian glass mirrors for $32,000. The table where JFK took his daily massages went for $8,500. The auction, dubbed Property from the Winter White House, generated $484,000 in bids.
The items were provided on consignment from John and Marianne Castle, the third owners of Joe Kennedy Sr. and Rose Kennedy’s Palm Beach home. The auction house will give the Castles a check for what the items sold for, minus commission owed 30 days after the sale.
Winning bidders also will pay a 25 percent fee to the auction house, plus sales tax. Leslie Hindman Auctioneers handles about 60 auctions a year, CEO Leslie Hindman said.
“We love Palm Beach because we handle a lot of fabulous jewelry,” she said. “We did Lilly Pulitzer’s estate, so we really like doing specialty sales like this. They are fun.”
Hindman said another reason she loves specialty sales is because they attract people who might not be regular auction attendees. More than 100 people a day visited the auction house’s West Palm Beach showroom to see the items during their week on exhibition.
“There’s so many people that are interested in this sale,” she said.
The auction offered a Kennedy family portrait as the last item for bid. Babe Davidoff, the widow of the photographer who shot the portrait, attended the sale with her son. The Davidoffs kept a photography studio on the island for more than 50 years. She said her husband interacted closely with the Kennedy family.
“He admired the president very much,” she said. “He considered him like a family member, really. When the shooting took place, he took it very hard.”
About the Author
