Name/Title
2018 White House Historical Society ornament: Harry TrumanEntry/Object ID
2015.4.225Description
2018 White House Historical Society ornament honoring Harry Truman and the extensive renovations that were made to the White House during his administration. According to Whitehousehistory.org: " A Turn of a Head
The Presidential Seal featured at the top of the Ornament reflects the design as changed by President Truman. Originally the American eagle looked toward its left talons, which hold a cluster of spears, weapons of war. Truman had the seal redesigned, turning the eagle's head away from the spears to its right talons, which hold the olive branches of peace."
"The Celebrated Truman Balcony
The front of the Ornament features the Truman Balcony, added to the White House in 1947-48. President Truman's alterations and renovations to the Executive Mansion were some of the most expansive in history."
"
President Truman's Renovation
During the administration of President Harry S. Truman, the White House underwent a renovation and expansion so extensive, it changed the executive mansion more than the fire of 1814. The White House we know today is largely due to the renovation led by Truman. The construction took place between 1948 and 1952 and was a remarkable feat of engineering. National Park Service photographer Abbie Rowe captured the entire process on film and the below galleries document the transformation."
"About 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's concerns, engineers confirmed that the White House was in a serious state. 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 three years while the White House underwent a complete reconstruction within its original exterior walls. In December 1949, crews began dismantling the interior."
To provide solid support for the interior walls, crews poured 126 new reinforced concrete support columns to a depth of 25 feet. This would eventually provide space for two newly excavated sub-basement levels. By autumn 1950, interior demolition had left the White House a cavernous hollow space 165 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 70 to 80 feet high.
Abbie Rowe visited the construction site frequently. His photographs not only tracked the progress of the work, but also tried to capture the architectural forms and a web of steel wall supports in attractive ways. Using backlighting to illuminate the dark cavernous spaces of the gutted structure, he gave a sense of depth and beauty to the crumbling piles of stone, mortar, timber, and brick.
To provide solid support for the interior walls, crews poured 126 new reinforced concrete support columns to a depth of 25 feet. This would eventually provide space for two newly excavated sub-basement levels. By autumn 1950, interior demolition had left the White House a cavernous hollow space 165 feet long, 85 feet wide, and 70 to 80 feet high.
Abbie Rowe visited the construction site frequently. His photographs not only tracked the progress of the work, but also tried to capture the architectural forms and a web of steel wall supports in attractive ways. Using backlighting to illuminate the dark cavernous spaces of the gutted structure, he gave a sense of depth and beauty to the crumbling piles of stone, mortar, timber, and brick.
By the summer of 1951 most interior partitions were complete. Service areas were modern and functional, bearing no visible similarity to their historical counterparts. Public spaces and family quarters were generally rebuilt to resemble the original rooms. Work proceeded at a rapid pace six days a week. In February 1952, furniture began arriving as workers finished sanding floors, painting walls, and installing tile.
As skilled craftsmen molded the raw materials into finished floors, walls, and ceilings, Abbie Rowe captured on film the contributions of the various construction trades. To add scale and a human personality, he was careful to include the faces of workers in many of his photographs. Their expressions often revealed their pride in contributing to the rebuilding of the White House.
Where once the White House had nearly collapsed from its structural deficiencies, now 660 tons of steel strengthened the new concrete inner walls and floors. Although retaining much of its historical appearance, the interior of the house now sparkled with new paint, wall coverings, parquet flooring and tile. At a cost of $5.7 million, the White House had been rebuilt to serve the needs of the modern Presidency while retaining the symbolism as the historic home of the President.
On the evening of March 27, 1952, in a small ceremony at the entrance door, President Truman received a gold key to the newly renovated White House. After spending more than three years living in the smaller quarters of the Blair House across the street, the first family returned to the mansion for their first night back in residence. It was both the same house they had left three years earlier and a new and larger home as well. Its original 48 rooms had expanded to 54, not including two entirely new sub-basement levels containing service areas and other support facilities.
In a live television special, the president proudly toured the renovated house, telling of events in its history. President Truman's renovation was the most radical in the history of the White House. His goal was to rebuild the house for all time. It remains today, redecorated, but essentially as he left it."
the back of the ornament features renovations to the Blue Room. According to whitehousehistory.org.org:
" Transformation of the Blue Room
The back of the Ornament features the renovated Blue Room decorated for the holidays. During the major renovations of 1948-52, the Blue Room, like all the rooms of the White House, was dismantled and rebuilt."
"The Blue Room with the Yellow Oval Room above and the Diplomatic Reception Room below it, form the most elegant space of James Hoban's plans for the White House. For the south wall of the Blue Room, he designed French doors flanked by long windows. An oval portico with curving stairs that descended to the south lawn was included in these original plans, but was not built until 1824. For expediency President John Adams used the space for a south entrance hall, as he occupied an unfinished house. Since the time of President Thomas Jefferson, this oval room has been used for receptions. However, the room has not always been blue. First Lady Dolley Madison preferred bold red velvet draperies for the "Oval Drawing Room" and her architect Benjamin Latrobe custom-designed a suite of classical-revival furniture with crimson cushions. The interiors and furniture were destroyed in the fire of 1814.
President James Monroe moved back into the house in 1817 after its restoration and redecorated the "large oval room" in the French Empire style. Monroe ordered mahogany furniture from Pierre-Antoine Bellange predominantly for formal use in the oval and state dining rooms. The president's agents, the American firm of Russell and La Farge in LeHavre, France, however, shipped 53 pieces of carved and gilded furniture with crimson silk upholstery. They informed the president that "mahogany is not generally admitted in the furniture of a Saloon, even at private gentlemen's houses."
One of the results of Jacqueline Kennedy's historical research was the placement of French furniture, originally ordered by President Monroe in 1818, in the Blue Room.
White House Historical Association
Red dominated the room's design when John Adams, the son of President John Quincy Adams, married Mary Catherine Hellen here on February 25, 1828. Andrew Jackson fitted the room out in green. Martin Van Buren redecorated the "elliptic saloon" and started the tradition of a "blue room" in 1837. In 1848, gas lighting was piped to all the chandeliers on the state floor except the Blue Room. Sarah Polk thought candles looked better in Monroe's luster, an elegant fixture that was reputed to have belonged to Napoleon. She was vindicated when on the first night that it was used, gas ran out and all went dark except the candlelit oval room.
In 1860, President James Buchanan sold the Bellange chairs and sofas at auction and replaced them with a Victorian Rococo Revival suite that served into the Theodore Roosevelt administration. In 1882 President Chester Arthur commissioned Louis Tiffany to redecorate the state rooms. Tiffany tinted the walls of the Blue Room in a light-green "robin's egg blue" which became lighter toward the ceiling and culminated in an ivory and silver frieze of hand-pressed paper. The Rococo Revival furniture was kept and reupholstered in blue silk canvas. Grover Cleveland - the first president to marry in the White House wed Frances Folsom in the Blue Room in 1886.
In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt hired McKim, Mead & White to renovate the White House. Charles McKim restored the Empire décor and designed a set of furniture comparable to the Bellange originals. The walls were covered with heavy, steel blue ribbed silk, woven to match a sample from the Napoleonic era. In 1948, the chandelier in the Blue Room tinkled a warning that the interior structure was in a shaky condition. President Harry Truman directed a major renovation that reconstructed the interior of White House on a new foundation and steel frame. In the rebuilt Blue Room, project architect Lorenzo Winslow restored James Hoban's original cornice design and continued McKim's silk wall coverings. In 1962, Jacqueline Kennedy directed the room's redecoration, covering the walls with a cream-colored satin. By that time, the White House had acquired three of the original Bellange chairs auctioned off in 1860, from which copies were made. Eight Bellange pieces have been recovered to date and share the room with copies.
Something Blue (Captured by Color, 1886) by Peter Waddell
On the mantle is a bronze-dore clock bearing the figure of the Carthage general Hannibal. The clock, made by French bronze casters Deniere and Matelin, was one of a pair bought by Monroe in 1817. It has been in the Blue Room since the days of his presidency.
Paintings of presidents are also on display. As secretary of state, Monroe commissioned John Vanderlyn to paint a presidential portrait of James Madison in 1816. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were vice presidents when they sat respectively for John Trumbull in 1793 and Rembrandt Peale in 1800. John Tyler's 1859 portrait by George P. A. Healy is one of the finest in the White House collection. Ander Zorn's portrait of President Taft shows the Blue Room of 1911. An 1819 portrait of James Monroe by Samuel F. B. Morse, who later patented the telegraph, hangs prominently in the room.
Mr. Truman's Renovation: Damask Wall Covering
The Blue Room still serves as a reception area, most notably during the holidays, when it is adorned by the official White House Christmas tree. Many distinguished guests have been received here. In 1822, James Monroe had tea and cake with chiefs of the Great Plains Indian tribes. In 1878, Rutherford Hayes accepted the credentials of the first Chinese minister to the United States. The Blue Room has also welcomed at least one child. During the Eisenhower Administration, the christening of granddaughter Mary Jean within these curving walls reminded the country that the White House is more than an icon of the presidency — it is home to a family."
The informational booklet included with the ornament reads as follows:
"2018 Annual White House Christmas Ornament
The White House Historical Association's 2018 White House Christmas Ornament honors Harry S. Truman, the thirty-third president of the United States. This ornament is designed to illustrate three significant changes made by President Truman during his administration, one to the Presidential Seal, and two to the White House itself. One side of the ornament features his celebrated Truman Balcony, added in 1947-48 to the South Portico, and the other side features his renovated Blue Room, which, like all the rooms of the house, was dismantled and rebuilt during the renovation of 1948-52. These two images represent Truman's White House alterations and restorations, the most extensive work on the house since President George Washington built it in the nation's dawning and Presidents James Madison and James Monroe restored it after the fire in the War of 1812.
The Presidential Seal featured at the top of the ornament reflects the design as changed by Truman. Originally the American eagle looked toward its left talons, which hold a cluster of spears, weapons of war. Truman, in the autumn after he took office, had the seal redesigned, turning the eagle's head away from the spears to its right talons, which hold the olive branches of peace.
Harry S. Truman (1884-1972)
President Harry S. Truman was close to his friends and associates, had a grin for strangers, but could be less than tolerant of some critics. The famous sign placed on his desk in the Oval Office, "The Buck Stops Here,"made it clear that as president he was responsible for all that happened on his watch. He came to the presidency in the shadow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, but emerged on his own with a stature that has grown monumentally in the sixty-five years since his retirement.
Truman came from the farmlands of the Midwest. Missouri-born, May 8, 1884, and except for his years of government service in Washington, D.C., he remained resident in his home state, most of that time in the fine Victorian house of his in-laws in the city of Independence. An old town east of Kansas City, Independence was the legendary gateway to the West by virtue of being the starting point for the Santa Fe Trail Truman's rise to fame held disappointments that likely would have ruined a man of lesser integrity. Born of modest farmers, he was not able to complete college but went to work after his basic schooling; he later attended law school but was by then too involved with public duties to complete the full program.
Young Truman was a hard worker, a trait integral to his character. He was not afraid to take chances. Kansas City, in his young manhood was a city afire with progress and entrepreneurship. The spirit ran in Truman's blood. Efforts to support himself took many forms--farming, bank clerking, timekeeping for a railroad, ushering in a theater on Saturday afternoons--all with little success, until he invested in an oil venture on a lease in Kansas. Yet his ambitions did not override his strong patriotic sensibility. He joined the new Missouri Army National Guard in 1905, returning to active duty when World War I broke out in 1917 as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army Field Artillery. He served with distinction throughout the war, almost entirely in France. Indeed, he sailed to France aboard the "George Washington," a confiscated German liner that was converted to a troop transport ship; it later carried President Woodrow Wilson to Paris for the Versailles Peace Conference when the War was over.
Truman's's taste for politics developed early, when he was 22, as a clerk serving under his father, an election judge. Kansas City politics were controlled at that time by the Pendergast "machine," a solidly Democrat and locally very powerful organization that took care of its valuable supporters with public jobs. Truman had several of these political jobs before his service in World War I. When Captain (shortly Major) Truman came home from the war, he married his longtime sweetheart Elizabeth ("Bess") Wallace and launched a clothing business. The business failed, and, turning to politics, Truman was elected county judge of the eastern district of Jackson County. In 1934 he was elected to the U.S. Senate by a vast majority, and was reelected in 1940.
Through effective committee work and favorable news coverage of some of his more sensational endeavors in Congress, notably unmasking fraud in government wartime spending, Truman advanced his reputation. Roosevelt approved him as his running mate for the presidential election of 1944, doubtless understanding that Truman would be his successor before the term was over. As vice president, Truman met with Roosevelt only twice. Five months after the election, on April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died in Georgia. Truman was summoned from the Capitol to the White House to be sworn in as president.
The Truman Presidency
Few Presidents coming into office have had to face the challenges awaiting President Truman. The most extensive and destructive war in world history was about to end in Europe but still raged in the Pacific. After the German surrender, Truman approved the use of the atomic bomb against Japan. It was the president's authority and his alone to give such an order.
The horror of the atom bomb did end the war with Japan. Truman then began a unique program for rebuilding the defeated Axis powers. General Douglas MacArthur led the effort in Japan, while in Europe General George C. Marshall headed the program named for him. Such extensive plans for rebuilding war-torn former enemies had never been carried out before in history. Only the Soviet Union and its European satellites declined to participate, a harbinger of tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations that came to be called the Cold War.
Truman proved an able negotiator in international affairs in the difficult postwar years. His presidency oversaw the founding of the United Nations. He recognized the State of Israel immediately upon its independence in 1948. Without his efforts it is unlikely that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would have been approved by Congress in the spring of 1949, drawing together twelve nations in a mutual defense pact against the threatened spread of Communism. In 1950 Truman sent U.S. troops to South Korea in support of a UN effort to stop communist North Korea's aggression.
Truman's domestic efforts were less successful. He tried to convince Congress to pass laws perpetuating Roosevelt's New Deal, while the national economy struggled to readjust to peacetime. Not until he won a surprise reelection in 1948 did Congress pay attention. Eventually some elements of his Fair Deal passed: public housing legislation, an increase in the minimum wage, and an expansion of Social Security. Truman was a strong advocate for civil rights, and by executing order he desegregated the military and guaranteed fair employment in the civil service.
As president, Truman was a genial host and kept a daily diary of his activities. The immense pressures of work were not lessened by Bess Truman's frequent absences in Independence with her mother. An avid reader of history all his life, Truman took time as president to continue with his volumes. His membership in the Masonic Order was important to him. During a meeting at the lodge in Alexandria, Virginia, he said, "I am 'Harry' here, not 'Mr. President.'" He took daily walks with Secret Service accompaniment; he called them "constitutionals." In his second year in office he vacationed at the deactivated navy base in Key West, Florida, referring to it hereafter as his "Little White House." At a State Dinner during the Potsdam Conference, he entertained Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin by playing the piano. He loved music and enjoyed the singing career of his daughter Margaret. The private Truman never really changed during the storms of his presidency.
President Truman's Changes to the White House
On the semicircular colonnade on the garden front of the White House, Truman's new, shelf-like balcony gave the first family outdoor access from their upstairs living quarters and a panoramic view of the city. Architects denounced it as an ugly scar on the original design of the house. Politicians accused the president of building it out of spite, to get even with Congress for denying promised funding for a greatly enlarged West Wing. There may have been a mite of truth in this last objection: for his balcony, Truman asked Congress for no funding and no approval, but took the $16,050.74 it ultimately cost from the existing household budget. Seventy years later, the Truman Balcony remains a favorite retreat for first families and their guests.
Reconstruction of the house inside the old original walls was a more complicated matter, and less controversial than the balcony. For some years the structural security of the old house had been under question. The Secret Service and engineers from the Office of Civilian Defense had presented a report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt soon after World War II began, declaring the White House with its wooden interior structure unsafe and a firetrap. Roosevelt essentially dismissed the report, but when it was placed before Truman early in his administration, the new president took serious notice.
The White House's structural problems had revealed themselves once the Roosevelts extracted thirteen army truckloads of personal possessions from the family quarters. Faced with sinking floors, swaying chandeliers, and cracked plaster, Truman revisited the engineering report. When a leg of his daughter Margaret's grand piano broke through the floor, the president and his family moved across the street to Blair House, where they celebrated Thanksgiving 1948 and remained until the spring of 1952. Designated by President Roosevelt in 1942 as the President's Guest House, Blair House became Truman's surrogate "White House" during the three and a half years it took to make the White House safe again. IT was at Blair House, around the dining room table, that Truman met with Marshall and William Clayton to develop the Marshall Plan. And it was at Blair House where two Puerto Rican nationalists made an attempt on the life of the president in 1950. The would-be assassins were stopped before gaining entry to the house and Truman, who was upstairs, was not harmed.
The president had studied the possibilities for a renovated White House before he made his decision on how the reconstruction would be carried out. It was obvious to most surrounding him that the solution was to demolish the entire house and build a copy. Truman hesitated. A student of history and a believer in the power of symbols of great times and great men, he could not let the home of the presidents go. At last he agreed to a plan of preserving the historic stone walls, built in the 1790s, and reconstruction of the interior. With a $5,400,000 budget from Congress in hand in the winter of 1949, Truman held fast to his decision. On a tour of inspection when the work was well along, he came upon workmen about to expand an original doorway opening to accommodate the entry of a bulldozer and dump truck through the walls, to dig deeper cellars inside the gutted shell. He stopped them on the spot. Both vehicles were dismantled and taken inside the old walls piece by piece, the reassembled to commence work.
President Truman moved back into the White House on March 27, 1952. The once-creaky old house was renewed. It looked the same, the rooms arranged as always, but now with every imaginable modern convenience. The eighteenth-century stone exterior was intact, but the steel and concrete interior was rock solid. Walls covered with plaster and wood were skillfully devised to suggest that no change had taken place whatsoever in the historic White House of the American presidency.
Christmas in the Truman White House
The Trumans spent only four Christmas seasons in the white House, for when the renovations began, it was impossible for them to live there. But most years the President lit the National Christmas Tree on the Ellipse, an oval park south of th white House Grounds. It was a tradition begun by Calvin Coolidge in 1923. On Christmas Eve 1945, his first in the White House, Truman stood on a bandstand on the South Lawn to light the tree. His speech was broadcast by radio: "This is the Christmas that a war-weary wold has prayed for through long and awful years. With peace come joy and gladness. The gloom of the war years fades as once more we light the National Community Christmas Tree. We meet in the spirit of the first Christmas, when the midnight choir sang the hymn of joy: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'"
the presentation also included carols sung by local choirs. Thousands of spectators massed over Pennsylvania Avenue, and others, by permit, entered the South Lawn. Afterward, the Trumans had dinner with family and friends in the Family Dining Room on the State Floor in the White House. A great cedar tree dripping in solver tinsel "icicles" cast its forest smell over the formal parlors.
Truman declined to run for another term in 1952, and following the election of Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Trumans spent their last Christmas in the White House that year. The celebration was more ambitious than the first had been. The president, acutely aware of advances in communication, delivered his address to the nation over both radio and television. From the South Lawn he pushed the button lighting the National Christmas Tree and wished "for all of you a Christmas filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and...the peace of God reigning upon this earth."
After the Presidency
on Inauguration Day the transfer of the power went smoothly. Relations between Truman and Eisenhower had cooled, but the president surprised his old friend by ordering Eisenhower's son John home from military duty for the occasion. Still, the outgoing and the incoming presidents said little to each other on the ride to the Capitol. After the ceremony, former President and Mrs. Truman were driven by the secret service to Union Station. A small crowd was there to bid them farewell. No official security was provided, but a Secret Service agent took annual leave to ride the train with the Trumans home to Missouri.
During his nearly twenty years of retirement, Truman remained an outspoken figure, supporting his liberal views. He rejoiced in the election of John F. Kennedy in 1960 and the return of the Democrats. Back in Independence he and Bess Truman occupied her mother's house, a place hardly changed since they moved there in 1919. President Truman spent many days at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence managing the interpretation and exhibits, and setting the historians and curators straight when he believed it necessary.
Harry S. Truman died in Kansas City's Research Hospital at the age of 88, on the day after Christmas 1972. Bess lived nearly another ten years before her death in 1982 at the age of 97. They are buried in the courtyard of the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library."
The final inside page of the booklet contains a bibliography and Illustration credits.Collection
ScarmuzziAcquisition
Accession
2015.4.0Source or Donor
Patricia A. ScarmuzziAcquisition Method
Gift