The condition of the 150-year-old White House in 1948 was a testament to the danger of making short-term improvements on the cheap for temporary residents.
In 1948, the White House was deemed unsafe for occupancy and the Truman family moved into Blair House, across Pennsylvania Avenue. The total gutting and three-year reconstruction of the White House began the next year. The exterior shell of the White House would be preserved and its original floor plan for the first floor would be followed, but little else would be retained. Above, Tad Lincoln stands in the North Driveway, March 6, 1865.
A tangled web of several generations of wires and pipes had been strung through the White House to provide the First Families with running water, central heating and electricity. Wooden floor beams had been gouged out to accommodate the pipes and wires, and decades of water leaks had made them rot and split. Some floors moved when walked on. Others sagged more than a foot in places. The Blue Room chandelier swayed. The leg of Margaret Truman’s piano crushed through rotted floor boards and penetrated the ceiling of the room below. President Truman’s bathtub began to sink into the floor.
The White House had undergone several rounds of renovations by 1948. One of the most extensive was done in 1889, when President Chester A. Arthur hired Louis Comfort Tiffany to redecorate. And Tiffany outdid himself, splashing gilt and glass and heavy decoration throughout the first floor state rooms, including the installation of a spectacular glass mosaic screen to separate the lobby from the Cross Hall. Second photo: the Cross Hall during the Truman renovation. The Main Stairway is on the right. During the Truman renovation, engineers discovered the bricks supporting the original staircase had crumbled. Third photo: President Kennedy's casket passes through the Cross Hall on Nov. 23, 1963.
The original East Room ceiling had begun to fall down prior to the Truman renovation and had been supported with scaffolding. The room had suffered through many major renovations by that time. The first photo shows the East Room in 1873. Second photo: during the 1945 funeral for FDR. Third photo: during the Truman renovation. Fourth photo:, in 2012, during a Rolling Stones concert.
During the Truman renovation, the State Dining Room was the only room where most of the original woodwork was saved and reinstalled. 1st photo: 1867, with windows blocked up; 2nd photo: 1904, with animal heads installed by Theodore Roosevelt; 3rd and 4th photos: the Truman reconstruction.
Lincoln used the second-floor room, now called the “Lincoln Bedroom,” as his office, as did many who preceded and followed him in office. The room became a bedroom in 1902 when the West Wing was built. Above, the room in 1889 and in the late 1890s, with Pres McKinley seated at the Resolute Desk. The bottom photos show the view of the entire White House second floor from the Lincoln Bedroom during the renovation and the Lincoln Bedroom after its completion, sporting uninspired furnishings.
Much of the work during the Truman renovation was structural. Engineers had discovered the foundation beneath the interior walls couldn't support the upper floors and roof, causing the interior walls and floors to pull away from the exterior walls, leaving large gaps. The kitchen, located on the lower floor, was extensively remodeled during the Truman renovation and it has had several major updates since then. It is show here in an early, undated photo, in 1933 and during the Truman renovation.
