Jenna Bush Hager ushers her girls across the gravel lot of a farm stand on Long Island’s woodsy North Shore, one they’ve visited a hundred times before. The girls clutch butter cookies (treats from the owner) as they climb back into their 1980s Pontiac station wagon. Bush Hager’s carrying sweet corn and buratta, Sequoia Alpine tomatoes and just-baked bread—anything that looks fresh for an easy summer supper with neighbors. Some of these gatherings are planned, the poolside table set. Others spring up like afternoon rainstorms, as day slides into evening and a crowded pool means everyone is staying for dinner.
It’s a routine the Today show cohost and former First Daughter has on delightful repeat in her world outside Manhattan, where she and her husband, Henry Hager, purchased a home for their growing family (Mila, 6; Poppy, 4; and son, Hal, who was born in August). They’d spent five or six summers renting in the area and had fallen in love with the North Shore’s two-second hamlets and mellow villages, “its mom-and-pop stores and coffee shops where everyone knows each other,” says Bush Hager. Plus, it’s an easy drive to the city, where they both work. They weren’t in the market to buy—not until a cottage tucked behind a thick stand of tall red cedars, dogwoods, and ferns went up for sale and beckoned with two magic words: open house.
“I inherited this habit from my mother: We go to open houses for fun,” says Bush Hager. “She has an incredibly strong sense for design—I think she was an architect in a different life—and we both love to look at a space and imagine what it might be. She always says when you visit any house, there’s a feeling you get.”
For Bush Hager, it was familiarity. The driveway is a slim, brush-lined path that takes its time. “There was something about it that reminded me of Texas, of being outside. Even this close to the city, there was a remoteness to it,” she says. Then there were the birdhouses, which were everywhere. “I come from a long line of birders. My parents bird for fun, and my grandmother Jenna was a naturalist. She would teach my sister, Barbara, and me about birds, rocks, every constellation in the sky.”
Tour Jenna Bush Hager's Long Island Home
The backyard was big. She imagined her kids running barefoot across it, the vegetable garden they’d plant, heading back down that long drive every afternoon in the summer. Less hustle, more puttering.
The next day, she brought Henry to see the four-bedroom cottage, which had been inhabited by just one owner (the couple who built it lived there until they passed away). They walked the long entry hall stretching from a bedroom wing to the kitchen and family room and stood in the sunny great room that connected it all. They marveled at an open-air poolhouse, with its charming latticework climbing the walls, all original to the home.
“You’re right,” Henry told her. “This feels like us.”
Afterwards, the two talked it over at a local cafe, and an older gentleman approached their table. “He said he’d been friends with my grandpa,” she recalls. “We mentioned the house, and he knew it well. ‘They get the best birds,’ he told us. It felt so serendipitous.”
In some ways, it had to, or it never would have gone further than that open house. “Jenna inherited her mother’s eye for design and is drawn to things with character and a history she can trace,” says Dallas-based designer Traci White, whose own history has intertwined with Bush Hager’s for nearly two decades. The two were college roommates at the University of Texas, and they’ve since collaborated on a number of projects, including outfitting the cottage.
They began by combing through pieces from both the Bush and Hager families: In came a late-20th-century sofa from Bush Hager’s side, which they modernized in blue velvet upholstery and pretty tassel fringe. A pair of wingbacks recovered in an Indian embroidery fabric came from Hager’s family, along with a mahogany sideboard. The president’s paintings—textural landscapes of Maine’s rocky coast and statuesque birds—brighten the walls, as do nature prints that once hung in the White House. They were part of a series Mrs. Bush commissioned while her husband was in office, depicting animal and plant life found at Camp David. When the couple bought the house, Mrs. Bush went through and pulled those sharing native commonalities with Long Island.
The house, too, had gifts to bestow: In the basement, the couple found a pair of fanciful painted chairs that now resides in the entry hall and a beautiful cache of iron outdoor furniture.
“Jenna and her mother enjoy considering pieces individually, in finding beauty in what’s there,” notes White. “It’s never about ‘new, new, new.’ ”
The couple did, however, overhaul the kitchen, replacing appliances, cabinetry, and fixtures, and giving it a greater sense of openness. “There’s something about this place—maybe its farm stands close by—that makes me want to cook more, entertain more,” says Bush Hager.
The Poolside Party Game Plan Jenna Puts on Repeat
She simplifies the seating plan. "It's hard for anything to feel pretentious outdoors. With so much beauty around us, we often throw tapestries on the ground, pull chairs out, and we're ready for guests.
She serves a mix-and-mingle menu. "If you're having fun, everyone else will. We serve things that don't trap me inside—grilled fish tacos. Texas casseroles like migas, or even just a good cheese plate."
She ignores the forecast. "You don't know how many times this poolhouse has saved us. It's our rain plan, so we never have to worry about whether it's a good day to invite friends or not."
This sense of ease plays out nearly every weekend in the summer and, in many ways, picks up where the former owners left off. Older locals tell of the countless pool and cocktail parties they attended there, likely seated in the same iron furniture or mingling in the poolhouse. Its lofty vaulted ceiling is today home to, of course, a family of birds. Their nests peek out from the painted beams, and when the rain pours in the summer, Bush Hager and her family join them. “There’s something magnificent about sitting under there with your friends and kids watching the rain,” she says. “You’re outdoors and you’re barefoot. It’s how Henry and I grew up, and it’s what we want for our children.” ✦
Photography by Tara Donne; Produced by Rachael Burrow; Styling by Frances Bailey
