The Restoration of the Truman White House
The Second World War was being fought to a finish. Within weeks, Adolf Hitler, isolated and delusional in his fortified bunker buried beneath Berlin, heard of Benito Mussolini’s ill end. The former dictator of Italy, who had reimagined the former glory of the Roman Empire and sought to regain it, fled, along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, hoping to reach Switzerland when they were intercepted and captured by Italian partisans. Clara Petacci insisted on sharing her lover’s fate, and both she and Mussolini were shot. The two ended up with their corpses dangling by their feet from a former filling station along with those of several other high-ranking Italian fascists. Their bodies would be beaten, mutilated, mangled and urinated upon by the furious Italian people who suffered war, defeat and bitter humiliation instead of glory.
With the Red Army inching ever closer in Berlin throughout some of the fiercest fighting of the war, Hitler vowed not to share Mussolini’s end. The German dictator married his own mistress, Eva Braun, and they committed suicide together in the bunker. Their bodies were burned in the courtyard of what was left of the ruined German chancellery.
The Germans unconditionally surrendered on May 7, 1945. President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not live to see it, nor the defeat of the Japanese Empire later that year. Roosevelt, who had been the commander-in-chief throughout the Second World War, died on April 13, 1945, from a cerebral hemorrhage at his Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia.
FDR had been warned about the physical condition of the house he had lived in longer than any other American president. The floors heaved, and mysterious sounds could be heard throughout the building, giving rise to stories of ghosts from staff and visitors. The Army Corps of Engineers had provided a report to President Roosevelt stating that the building was a serious fire hazard, the masonry was crumbling, and the wooden structure of the White House was failing rapidly. With the Second World War raging, Roosevelt had more important things on his mind despite his profound fear of being trapped in a fire due to his inability to walk. It was a decision Roosevelt felt he could make at another time on a different day.
There had been numerous other remodelings and renovations, many of which were not helpful to the continued existence of the White House. A 1902 renovation, undertaken during the administration of Eleanor Roosevelt’s uncle, Theodore Roosevelt, had been done too quickly and not very well. It had actually done little more than weaken the existing structure. It was Theodore Roosevelt who had added the “West Wing” to the White House, which was remodeled and extended by his successor as president, William Howard Taft, who had constructed the first Oval Office. President Woodrow Wilson uprooted the colonial garden and replaced it with a rose garden.
Another renovation, done in 1927 while Calvin Coolidge was president, added steel beams, which proved to be too heavy for the White House’s foundations. Under President Coolidge, the attic and upper floors of the White House were renovated. A fire on Christmas Eve 1929, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover, caused the West Wing to be remodeled yet again.
The tenant who remained in the White House the longest, Franklin Roosevelt, had a swimming pool built, once again remodeled the West Wing and added a second floor. FDR was also the chief executive who moved the Oval Office to its present location. President Richard Nixon filled in FDR’s swimming pool to build a press room and added a bowling alley in the basement.
Roosevelt was also spared the decision whether or not to drop the atomic bomb on Japanese cities to force them into surrendering, rather than squandering the lives of perhaps as many as one million young American soldiers. Vice President Harry Truman had been largely ignored by Franklin Roosevelt and never briefed about any aspect of the war or anything else. A veteran of the United States Senate, the dapper little man from Missouri did not usually have any difficulty in making a decision.
After giving former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt ample time to move out of the White House, the Trumans left their unpretentious and simple apartment on Connecticut Avenue, and whatever expectations they likely had quickly dissipated. What the Trumans and their daughter Margaret found was a building in serious need of extensive repairs. The White House had been burned by British troops during the War of 1812, and in subsequent years, with inadequate attention and less funding, the White House was coming apart from neglect, hurried repairs and poorly done renovations.
Harry Truman had built what became known as the “Truman Balcony,” which provided much-needed shade for the portico below in the torrid heat of Washington weather and a comfortable place for the president, his family, friends and guests to sit when the climate was pleasant. The project was controversial at the time, and today it is a fixture of the modern White House.
By 1948, an inspection done by architects and engineers came away with the dire report that the residence portion of the White House might fall in upon itself at any moment. Truman was given a report that warned of the “imminent collapse” of the second floor of the White House, which is where he, Bess and Margaret lived. The final straw was when the leg of the piano in Margaret Truman’s room went through the floor and could be viewed from the family dining room below.
Apparently, the most serious threat to the good health and well-being of the president of the United States was continuing to live inside the White House. President Truman, his family and the domestic staff of the White House were moved to the Blair House, which sat across the street on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Blair House would serve as the president’s residence for the next four years.
In one letter to Bess, who was back in Missouri, Truman wrote, “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.”
“The floors pop and the drapes move back and forth,” Truman wrote to his wife. “I can just imagine old Andy [Jackson] and Teddy [Roosevelt] having an argument over Franklin [Roosevelt].”
With Truman’s upset victory, defeating an overconfident Thomas E. Dewey, Democrats had also won back control of both houses of Congress. The House and Senate were open-handed in a proper and extensive renovation of the White House, not only for Harry Truman but for future occupants of the Executive Mansion.
Congress actually considered whether or not it would be better to bulldoze the White House and build from scratch. In the end, the White House would survive, but it would undergo the most extensive renovation since British troops had burned the building in 1814.
The Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion was formed in March 1949. President Truman had two appointments to the commission, and he named Douglass Orr, the president of the American Institute of Architects, and Richard E. Dougherty, who was the president of the American Society of Civil Engineers. To be sure, Congress was well represented on the committee as it was paying all the bills. Senator Edward Martin, a conservative Republican and former general who had served as the governor of Pennsylvania; Congressman J. Harry McGregor, an Ohio Republican; and Congressman Louis Rabaut of Michigan, a Democrat who is best remembered for having added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The chairman of the commission was Tennessee’s Senator Kenneth McKellar, who was also the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.
A bachelor, with his two maiden sisters dead, Senator McKellar had sold his home in Memphis and moved to a suite at the Gayoso Hotel downtown. On the morning of November 16, 1949, Senator McKellar was preparing to take a bath when he slipped and fell as he stepped into the tub. As he fell, McKellar hit the water spigot, which caused a cascade of near-scalding water to pour down his left shoulder, side and thigh. McKellar had been aided by his administrative assistant, W. R. Davidson, who heard the senator shouting and helped him out of the tub.
Never one to be bothered by a little discomfort or even outright pain, McKellar shaved, got dressed and went to breakfast. Sometime later in the day, the senator finally agreed to be examined by a doctor, and Davidson drove McKellar to the hospital in the senator’s own automobile.
The senator was taken to Baptist Hospital in Memphis, where he was treated for second- and third-degree burns. The 80-year-old senator was a tough old fellow and saw reporters the following day. Doctors insisted on keeping McKellar at the hospital, worried about the possibility of infection or pneumonia, and ignored the senator’s protests and placed him in a room.
“The doctors tell me it is more painful than serious,” McKellar told newsmen. “I’ll be out of here tomorrow or next day as good as new.”
“I plan to return to Washington the latter part of the month,” the senator added.
To keep out the senator’s many friends, a “NO VISITORS” sign was placed on the door to McKellar’s room. The senator’s brother, Clint, the former postmaster of Memphis, stayed with him most of the day. Despite his pain, McKellar was cooperative when newspaper photographers wished to take his picture. The senator flatly rejected the idea of being photographed in his pajamas, which he thought unbecoming, so despite his pain, he dressed himself and allowed the newsmen to snap their photographs.
McKellar was ready to leave the hospital, but the burns were serious, and due to his age, doctors exercised considerable caution. The senator’s stay in the hospital lengthened, much to his great displeasure. McKellar got up out of his hospital bed the following Monday and said he was going out to breakfast, promising to return. A nurse agreed, and the senator returned after enjoying an ample breakfast at a downtown hotel.
The senator experienced the worst pain yet when, after a week, the bandages were removed and new dressings applied. Doctors said the senator would have to remain in the hospital for another week or more. The senator was flown from Memphis to Johnson City, where he was checked into the veteran’s hospital to receive continued treatment for his burns. McKellar needed assistance and could not change the dressings himself. When it became obvious he would be held at the hospital longer than he anticipated, the senator resigned from the renovation commission. Friends in the Senate and elsewhere convinced McKellar to remain on the commission, which he did, heading it until the work was completed in 1951.
The renovation of the White House left the façade the same, but the interior was completely gutted and reconstituted. It was given a steel frame, and an underground labyrinth was built beneath the White House, which included a fallout shelter and much more besides, which became known as the Presidential Emergency Operations Center. The grand staircase was also changed substantially, and the interior rooms were rebuilt entirely. The new rooms were larger, and more modern conveniences were then placed inside the White House.
With everything in the interior being renovated, it proved to be an extravaganza for collectors of souvenirs, some of which still exist in collections today. The renovation commission had planned for the “disposition of surplus material,” with bricks from the old White House being sold to members of the public. Each item purchased by the public came with a small bronze plaque, and the proceeds earned a profit for the U.S. Treasury.
The Trumans moved out of Blair House and returned to live in the White House on March 27, 1952. For the better part of four years, the White House had been undergoing renovations before President Truman and his family could return to the much-improved and modern White House with which we are familiar today.
© 2025 Ray Hill
