Podcast Dinner with the President
From hot dogs to haute cuisine, U.S. Presidents have communicated important messages through food. Stewart McLaurin, President of the...
Main Content
A May 1952 photograph of President Truman and his Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion appointed in 1949 to oversee the proposed work on the White House. Left to right: Major General Glen E. Edgerton, Representative McGregor, Senator Kenneth McKellar, Richard E. Dougherty, the president, Mr. Douglas W. Orr, Representative Louis C. Rabaut, Senator Edward Martin.
National Park ServiceThe East Room during the final stages of the careful removal of decorative and other parts intended for reuse in 1950.
National Park ServiceThis photograph, taken March 7, 1950, shows the cracked wooden support beam that had been underneath Margaret Truman's sitting room on the second floor. Her piano broke through the floor in 1948, after which steel supports were added to reinforce the weakened beam.
White House CollectionCracks discovered in the north brick wall of the West Sitting Hall revealed during the engineering inspection in 1948.
Abbie Rowe, National Park ServiceDemolition work in 1950 exposed architect James Hoban’s original plaster cornice beneath the cornice from the 1902 Theodore Roosevelt renovation by McKim, Mead and White.
National Park ServiceAbout this Gallery
"The damned place is haunted, sure as shootin. . . . You and Margie had better come back and protect me before some of these ghosts carry me off." Harry Truman, in a letter to his wife Bess, September 9, 1946
Shortly after moving into the White House, President Truman noticed the telltale signs of a building under serious physical stress. He frequently complained of drafts and unusual popping and creaking noises and joked of ghosts that inhabited the old house. "The floors pop and the drapes move back and forth. I can just imagine old Andy [Jackson] and Teddy [Roosevelt] having an argument over Franklin [Roosevelt]," he wrote to Bess back home in Missouri in June 1945.
Early in 1948, in response to the President Truman's concerns, engineers confirmed that the White House was structurally weak and in danger of collapse. Burned to the exterior walls in 1814, further compromised by the successive additions of indoor plumbing, gas lighting, electric wiring, heating ducts, and major modifications in 1902 and 1927, some said the White House was standing only from the force of habit. The decision was made to move the Trumans across the street into the Blair House for more than three years while the White House underwent a complete reconstruction within its original exterior walls. In December 1949, crews began dismantling the interior.
From hot dogs to haute cuisine, U.S. Presidents have communicated important messages through food. Stewart McLaurin, President of the...
Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., the nation’s only unelected president and vice president, served thirteen terms in Congress before rising to...
From First Lady Dolley Madison's sister Lucy Payne Washington's wedding in 1812 to the nuptials of President Joseph Biden and First...
When First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy took on the herculean task of restoring the interior of the White House, she appointed...
In the 1960s, First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy oversaw the task of restoring the White House interiors and thus founded the...
Every year since 1981, the White House Historical Association has had the privilege of designing the Official White House Christmas Ornament....
In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was sworn in for the first of his four terms as president of the United States....
The American experiment has long held the curiosity of people around the world, especially for Iain Dale, an award-winning British...
Thousands of people traverse historic Lafayette Park every day to get a glimpse of the White House. The park, right...
Since the laying of the cornerstone in 1792, Freemasons have played an important role in the construction and the history of...
Native Americans hold a significant place in White House history. For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples, including the Nacotchtank and...
Since 1965, the White House Historical Association has been proud to fund the official portraits of our presidents and first ladies,...