In the late '40s, the executive mansion was in a condemnable state. To save it, everything had to go.
Harry S Truman inherited a White House that was in horrendous shape.
After the British nearly burnt it to the ground in 1814, the
construction of 20th-century innovations—indoor plumbing, electricity,
and heating ducts—had also taken its toll on the structure. The building
was nearly 150 years old, and it showed its age. In November 1948, the
building was in a near-condemnable state, as The New York Times reported:
The ceiling of the East Room, elaborately done in the frescoes of
fruits and reclining women and weighing seventy pounds to the square
foot, was found to be sagging six inches on Oct. 26, and now is being
held in place by scaffolding and supports.... But it took the
$50,000 survey authorized by Congress to disclose the fact that the
marble grand staircase is in imminent danger. Supporting bricks, bought
second hand in 1880, are disintegrating.
The social events of the 1948 holiday season had to be canceled. And
with good reason: Experts called the third floor of the White House “an
outstanding example of a firetrap.” The result of a federally commissioned report found
the mansion’s plumbing “makeshift and unsanitary,” while “the
structural deterioration [was] in ‘appalling degree,’ and threatening
complete collapse.” The congressional commission on the matter was
considering the option of abandoning the structure altogether in favor
of a built-from-scratch mansion, but President Truman lobbied for the
restoration.
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