President Harry S. Truman changed the White House structurally and architecturally more than any other president who occupied the building. He built a balcony on the south facade, reconstructed all but the outer stone shell of the building, and created vast service spaces below ground. Had he succeeded with other plans, he would have overseen the building of a mighty West Wing office complex as well; but this last proved politically impossible. The unprecedented scope of what he did and his commitment to the preservation of the essentials of a preeminent American symbol recast the historic building, putting it on its way to becoming an international symbol. Truman saved the White House as the home of the president of the United States. While his approach may seem strangely destructive today, it complied, for the most part, with historic preservation philosophies of the period.Truman’s interest in history drove his agenda. During the 1920s and 1930s he had been involved in various historic preservation projects in his native Jackson County, Missouri, including the preservation of the county’s first courthouse, a log structure built in 1827, and the rehabilitation of its successor in Independence. The latter project was the seventh remodeling of a vernacular structure originally built in 1832 and transformed into a variety of architectural styles (this time it emerged Neo-Georgian). Truman characteristically downplayed his interest in design, calling himself "an architectural nut." In actuality, it was history that made him interested in architecture. His concept of historic preservation, true to the Victorian age in which he was born, centered more on memorial aspects than on conservation: the corporeal entity could change as long as its soul remained intact.

When discussions of remodeling or replacing the deteriorated White House began in 1946, Stanley W. McClure, historian and assistant chief for memorials and historic sites for the National Park Service, served as the point of contact for questions regarding White House history. Earlier, Chief Usher of the White House Howell G. Crim had requested that the National Park Service begin to research the White House and its publicly owned furnishings to establish what might be considered historic. With a $15,000 budget (augmented in 1949 by an additional $15,000 approved by President Truman) McClure assessed furnishings and prepared research papers.

In 1947, two years after his failed attempt to expand the executive offices and the West Wing by virtue of a substantial addition, Truman proposed his celebrated–and notorious–south balcony. Deciding that a second-story porch was needed on the south front of the White House, behind the circular colonnade of the South Portico, he invoked Thomas Jefferson’s porches on the Lawn at the University of Virginia as a historic precedent for his desired addition. Truman insisted that Jefferson had actually intended such a porch for the White House, but, when pressed for specific documentation, never cited anything conclusive. ("Whether he designed it or not . . . I don’t know, but his design came from these southern mansions at the time, which always had a portico.") Truman ordered White House architect Lorenzo S. Winslow and William Adams Delano, who had a fashionable architectural practice in Manhattan, to draw it up. They did so, using photographs and white ink. At last they achieved a solution involving minimal alteration.

The portico, a major feature of the White House, had remained untouched since it was built in 1824. Both Crim and Winslow hesitated, knowing that any alteration to the south facade of the building would cause controversy. Truman insisted that he wished only to improve the appearance of the White House. Conferences were held with the Commission of Fine Arts, which attempted to thwart the project. Nevertheless, Truman, Winslow, and Delano forged ahead. The Commission of Fine Arts and others were horrified, and so began a furor that continued until March 1948.

Reaction was both swift and personal. FDR’s former Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes published a scathing indictment of Truman’s taste, while scores of ordinary citizens flooded the executive office with letters and telegrams decrying the alteration. A businessman from Winona, Minnesota, sent the president a sample of asphalt siding embossed with a brick pattern. He said this sort of treatment was popular on many homes in Missouri, and since the president now had his porch, perhaps he would consider covering the rest of the building in a material he could more readily appreciate and that would make the White House seem more like home. A White House aide ruefully noted in pencil on the bottom of the letter, "Guess we will have to file [the] tarpaper." Now and then a letter observed that the building had been variously altered from its original design–the North Portico and South Portico were later additions–and that therefore Truman’s balcony fit into a time-honored tradition.

Delano was so proud of the addition that he wrote ditties about it and sent them to Truman. His first went to the president on May 3, 1948, after he had received a note from Truman expressing his satisfaction with the finished balcony: A second story Balcony: It seemed a simple plan To give a quiet breathing space To a much harried man. Yet no sooner was it mooted Than a fierce attack began: The die-hards of the nation Pronounced a solemn ban– What! touch this sacred edifice? (Quite often touched before) ‘Twas sacrilege to those who loved The sunshine of T.R. Now the tempest has subsided; The teapot scarcely stirs; And the shade of Thomas Jefferson In shadow gently purrs.

Delano’s Further Thoughts on the Balcony was dated November 22, 1948, following the president’s triumphant reelection: On the second of November When you cast your vote at home The shade of Thomas Jefferson Sat on your porch–alone. His eyes were on the Poll Boys, Who predicated your defeat: In his heart he never doubted That the people’s voice would meet The challenge of our changing world Or ever sound retreat. There may you, too, find wisdom When problems overwhelm You, Captain of our Ship of State, Now standing at the helm.

Truman’s most significant project for the White House began in the fall of 1948 and continued until 1952. The entire interior was dismantled and a modern structure built within the historic walls. At a cost of more than $5.5 million, the project saved the soul of the symbolic White House while sacrificing very nearly all of its interior historic fabric. The president and his consultants insisted that the White House needed rebuilding, and it seemed there was very little alternative. The wooden infrastructure had deteriorated, and President Calvin Coolidge’s 1927 third floor addition, a mighty load of concrete, weighed heavily on the rest of the house below it.

From the start, the Truman renovation was orderly and thorough in ways that had not characterized earlier White House projects. In January 1948, Commissioner of Public Buildings W. E. Reynolds presented a report on the condition of the second-floor presidential office (a room then called the study and today known as the Yellow Oval Room). Reynolds found the floor to be in a weakened state and suggested a limit of 15 people in the room at any one time. He later said, "The White House wouldn’t pass the safety standards of any city in the country." In February 1948, Truman appointed a committee that included Reynolds and Winslow as well as Richard E. Dougherty, president of the American Society of Civil Engineers, and Douglas W. Orr, president of the American Institute of Architects. The committee quickly agreed that the house needed a thorough assessment.

Engineers inspected the house in May and June, while Mrs. Truman was away on a visit to Missouri. With little resistance, Congress appropriated $50,000 for the assessment and for plans to modernize and fireproof the building. The report as delivered that autumn was discouraging, indicating that the building was in poor repair. On October 26, 1948, maintenance men found a large amount of fallen plaster on the floor of the East Room, which prompted Chief Usher Crim to close the house to the visiting public. On November 8, 1948, Major General Philip B. Fleming said he believed the White House was unsafe and suggested that the Trumans move across the street to Blair House. Truman wrote from Key West on November 17, 1948, that he agreed, and by Thanksgiving the president and his family had relocated to 1651 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now discussions began in earnest as to the fate of the 150-year-old White House. Permanently moving the president’s residence was considered as an alternative, as it had been many times in the past, but was readily dismissed. The construction of a duplicate White House on an alternative site with more extensive grounds, an idea that had come up in the late 19th century, was also considered and rejected. As for the president, he was both concerned and frustrated when he wrote: "The facts in the case are this. This old barn called the White House should be turned into a museum and a comfortable residence, inside a 160 acre farm in reach of Washington, should be arranged for the president so he could live like other people, but that, of course, is beyond the dreams of probability." Truman knew that he could not move the executive seat without considerable public outcry. He finally settled for the idea of a new house within the old walls.

Any consideration of a restoration that would preserve the original materials both inside and out received little attention. Sophisticated conservation concepts had not come of age in the United States; indeed, the National Trust for Historic Preservation received presidential approval only in 1949, its charter signed within hearing of bulldozers grinding away at the White House. Preservation philosophies of the period tended to concentrate on the exteriors of structures; interiors were generally of lesser consideration. Truman thought the exterior walls of the White House could be saved–in fact, he insisted that the walls, built under the eye of George Washington, be retained. The interior, burned out in 1814 and completely reworked in 1902, could go. Character-defining elements such as doors, mantels, and fixtures could be retained for later reinstallation. Then, a new steel and concrete structure built on the inside would support a duplicate of the original interior.

During the next five years, the work on the building was overseen by the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion, created by Congress at Truman’s request on April 14, 1949, and the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration. An appropriation of $5.4 million had been requested for the work. The members of the commission were presidential appointees: Richard Dougherty and Douglas Orr, both from the committee Truman had appointed the year before; Senators Kenneth D. McKellar of Tennessee and Edward Martin of Pennsylvania; and Congressmen Louis C. Rabault of Michigan and Frank B. Keefe of Wisconsin. The president briefed the commission on June 3, and Congress approved the appropriation on June 23. Major General Glen E. Edgerton was appointed executive director. A retired army chief of staff, Edgerton had experience in a variety of complex engineering studies run by commissions, including those on the Panama Canal and the Upper Mississippi 9-Foot Channel Project.

Lorenzo Winslow remained architect in charge of the work, directly responsible to the president. Consultants for the project were William Delano and engineer Ernest Howard of Howard, Needles, Tammen, and Bergendorf of Kansas City. Precision leveling of the structure was undertaken by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. The concept that actually made it possible to retain the old shell for use with a new building was that of a young structural engineer named Mahmood K. Taher, a naturalized citizen born in Persia (Iran) and an employee of the engineering subcontractors Spencer, White, and Prentis of New York. Taher’s designs for the underpinning work enabled contractors to incorporate permanent steel columns into the temporary shoring. His concepts also represented the most important contribution to the overall shoring design for the outer walls.

During the work of renovation, which began in 1949, the commission met about every 10 days and reported to the president at appropriate intervals. Typically, Truman relied on the commissioners for day-to-day advice, but all major decisions remained his own. The commission’s and the president’s decisions on the White House were of great concern–and, not infrequently, annoyance–to the Commission of Fine Arts and its new chair, David E. Finley, director of the National Gallery of Art. Though the members of the CFA were mostly Truman appointees, they were not generally asked for their opinions. Finley insisted that they had the right by law to review the plans, as did Mrs. Harold I. Pratt, longtime member of the ad hoc White House Advisory Committee on interior furnishing, established in the Coolidge administration. Both were strong-willed and, in this fact, mistaken. For the most part, the president ignored the advisory committee and asked the Commission of Fine Arts for approval of architectural changes only when the project was complete, insisting that rebuilding the White House fell under the president’s prerogative.

The renovation of the President’s House ended three-and-one-half years after it began, on March 27, 1952, when President Truman and his commissioners toured the completed building. The interior was recognizable as the White House, although its halls seemed colder and more public where marble had replaced plaster. Portions of the 1902 decorations had been redesigned, and postwar Moderne form had appeared. Eleanor Roosevelt is reported to have said, in reminiscing years later, "Mr. Truman showed me around the White House, which he’d just redone, and he was so proud of the upstairs, which looked to me exactly like a Sheraton Hotel!"

Mrs. Roosevelt’s assessment of Harry Truman’s renovation smacked of overstatement. But it was certainly a different version of the same house within, especially away from the state rooms. Six hundred sixty tons of steel now supported the interior building, and foundations had been shored. Attempts were made to preserve important interior elements, but most of the treatments had been recreated. More than 100 rooms replaced the original 64 in the renovated White House. Antiqued window glass, yellowish with bubbles, was a quaint foil to all else that seemed so new. The Blue Room, Red Room, and Green Room appeared bright, with new damask wall coverings in their famous colors. The Lincoln office, formally reestablished before the renovation as the Lincoln Bedroom, housed an ornate rosewood bed purchased by Mary Todd Lincoln. White House antiques were returned, refurbished and shining, to take their places beside "traditional furniture" from contemporary catalogs.

It was the same White House outside, although whiter than ever, beneath three coats of paste-white lead, boiled and raw linseed oils, turpentine and petroleum spirits, spar varnish, and liquid drier. Truman, however, was under no illusion that he had retained the historic structure; the White House was a new structure based on a historic model. The president later remarked to Douglas Orr that "McKim, Mead, and White would probably turn over in their graves if they knew that we really have done a job on the old White House."

Nevertheless, as an image, the White House remained the White House in the minds of the American public, regardless of alteration. Glenn Stanton, president of the American Institute of Architects, congratulated President Truman "for a project that stirs pride and appreciation throughout the land." The lock maker Yale & Towne Manufac-turing presented the president with a gold key in a leather box inscribed:

In a free society, the key to a man’s house symbolizes his and his family’s rights to those privacies and freedoms which are the heart and sinews of the American way of life. This key and the lock it operates are the products of the skills and ingenuity of American men and women living and working safe in their liberties. With God’s help, may it ever be so!

In September 1953, Stanley McClure published a report detailing the research accomplished by his office for the renovation. In addition to making a card catalog for ready reference and writing historical research papers, McClure and other National Park Service staff had numbered and photographed furnishings and assembled a collection of historic photographs of the White House. A historical index card file organized by administration and subject categories had been created as well as a reference library of books and magazine and newspaper articles. In addition, a White House bibliography had been compiled and the house collection assessed. The historical record had been thus meticulously preserved, even as the physical history of the house had vanished. At the end, in a rush to complete the project before the end of the president’s administration, many of the rescued moldings, doors, and other interior ornaments were either hauled to dumps or made into souvenirs as Lorenzo Winslow watched helplessly in horror.

The Truman renovation recast the White House as a historical icon–a symbol of a nation and its people. Truman would be the first president to use the house as a background for television appearances. This sort of imagery was wholly new. However, the status of the White House as a national symbol was not new but of long duration. From its initial construction it was George Washington’s house, even though he never lived there. By Lincoln’s time it had acquired an almost magical aura. Walt Whitman, working as a Civil War nurse in Washington, recorded: "Tonight [I] took a long look at the President’s House . . . The White House of future dreams and dramas . . . fully reality, full of illusion . . . The White House of the land."19 Truman, especially aware of history and his place in it, was not one to shirk hard decisions. He yielded a portion of the original house as it had evolved over the years so that the national symbol could endure.

Fifty years later Truman’s historic vision and subsequent re-creation of America’s first residence have become a major part of White House history, nearly as important to the place as the original construction. It continues to be a potent national symbol, full of both reality and illusion, a daily stage for the dreams and dramas of the American nation.