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Contemporary Jungle. Only ultramodern Kennedy home is Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver's duplex in Chicago's Lincoln Park section. Much of the furniture was designed by Denmark's Finn Juhl and the U.S.'s Eero Saarinen; the living room is a jungle gym of iron chair frames and brass lamp poles, set off by modern paintings by Josef Albers and Hugo Weber. The paneled library with its early 19th century English desk is the only noncontemporary room in the apartment. "I didn't want to make the library modern," says Eunice Shriver, "because I think a library should have the charm of an old room." Cork floors have been laid in the downstairs hall and the dining room so that the three Shriver children and one foster child can haul their toys around and run their electric trains with out damaging the flooring. Explains Eunice Shriver: "You don't ordinarily use your dining room for this sort of thing, but you have to make use of all your space in an apartment."
Few decorators would pick any one of the Kennedy houses as a model of gracious living or inventive design. But the best indication that the Kennedy establishments succeed as homes—as thoroughly comfortable "machines for living"—is the almost invariable reaction of visitors: "I'd like to live there."