A piano through the floor: The controversial history of White House renovations

WASHINGTON – President Harry Truman knew it was time to gut the White House when the leg of a black Baldwin grand piano broke through the floor of his daughter Margaret’s sitting room.

The president joked in a letter to his daughter that it would have surprised his wife’s gathering of the Daughters of the American Revolution if he had crashed through the ceiling in his marble bathtub.

“Would have gotten a headline to say the least don’t you think?” Truman wrote.

Truman moved across Pennsylvania Avenue into the Blair House, which is now reserved for visiting dignitaries, from 1948 to 1952 while construction crews gutted and renovated the aging presidential residence. Modern materials such as steel and concrete strengthened the original wood-and-brick building.

That Truman-era renovation changed the historic structure more than a damaging fire during the War of 1812 or President Donald Trump’s demolition of the East Wing. Controversy followed each major – and even minor – overhaul in more than two centuries since the original building was completed in 1800. President Thomas Jefferson’s colonnades, Truman’s namesake balcony and even Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden were each criticized for their cost or for tampering with history.

Personal tastes of presidents and their families - as well as the demands of a growing federal government - has helped dictate changes over time to the White House. Here are some highlights:

ORIGINAL WHITE HOUSE BUILT FROM 1792 TO 1800

Unable to view our graphics? Click here to see them.

President George Washington mostly lived and worked in Philadelphia during his two terms as the new nation's first leader. A Virginia native, Washington chose the location of the planned “President’s House” but never occupied it.

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson organized an architectural competition in 1792 to design the mansion with a $500 prize won by Irish-born James Hoban, according to the White House Historical Association.

When President John Adams moved in in November 1800, many rooms had not yet been plastered and there was a hole where the grand staircase was planned. First lady Abigail Adams used the unfinished East Room as a laundry room.

JEFFERSON COLONNADES 1801

Jefferson worked with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe to add colonnades, which are covered walkways supported by classical Ionic columns, according to the White House Historical Association.

The east and west colonnades led to service buildings such as the ice house and storage rooms for coal and wood.

Federalist critics in Congress argued the colonnades looked aristocratic. National Intelligencer newspaper editorials questioned the necessity of such embellishments for a government building.

Nowadays, the west colonnade runs along the modern Rose Garden and leads to the Oval Office, but the east colonnade is being demolished as part of Trump’s ballroom project.

President Barack Obama called the walk along the west colonnade his “45-second commute” to the Oval Office from the main building between the East and West wings where the family resided.

BRITISH BURNING 1814

During the War of 1812, British troops set fire to the President’s House on Aug. 24, 1814. Most of the building’s interior and furnishings were destroyed, but the exterior walls remained standing, according to the White House Historical Association.

After the fire, some lawmakers considered moving the house elsewhere in DC or even to another city. But President James Madison rehired Hoban to rebuild under the original design.

Hoban was credited with completing the reconstruction in three years. But his shortcuts included reusing some of the damaged stone walls and substituting wood for brick in some interior walls, which weakened the building in ways Truman later discovered.

Despite the myth that the house was painted white to cover burn marks from the fire, the building had been covered with a lime-based whitewash since 1798 to protect the porous sandstone from freezing, according to the historical association. The renovated building was painted white in 1818.

“White House” had been a nickname, but President Teddy Roosevelt made it official in 1901.

ANDREW JACKSON NORTH PORTICO 1829 TO 1830

President Andrew Jackson oversaw the addition of the North Portico, the covered porch that has become the public face of the White House, in 1829 and 1830.

Hoban supervised construction of the porticoes on the north and south sides of the building that Latrobe originally designed in 1807. Hoban had added the South Portico under President James Monroe after the British set the building on fire.

Congress appropriated $24,729 for the North Portico during an economic downturn and the United States Telegraph newspaper criticized Jackson as a lavish expense, according to the historical association. Whig Party critics said the money could have been better spent on new construction or reducing the debt.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT WEST WING 1902

President Theodore Roosevelt oversaw the removal in 1902 of the Victorian-era conservatories – glass structures used for growing plants – to the west of the main building.

In their place, he created the West Wing full of office space for the president and key staffers, as a separate area from the residence under architect Charles McKim’s design, according to the historical association.

Lawmakers scrutinized the $65,000 cost. The Washington Post said the removal of the greenhouses “destroyed its historic value and does not seem to have made it much more desirable as a residence.”

TAFT OVAL OFFICE 1909

President William Howard Taft held a competition that selected architect Nathan Wyeth to design what became the iconic Oval Office, according to the historical association. Taft began working there in October 1909.

Wyeth modeled the office on the oval Blue Room in the main building, which now has a view south to the Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial. Washington had asked for the rounded walls of the Blue Room in the original design to serve as a state dining room, based on traditionally gatherings called "levees" where guests assembled in a semi-circle.

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT’S EAST WING 1942

President Franklin D. Roosevelt added the East Wing in 1942 to house additional staff and offices during World War II, and included a shelter for wartime security.

Congressional Republicans called the expenditure wasteful and the secretive project fueled more suspicions about its necessity, according to the historical association.

Later in the war, the East Wing eventually became the base for the first lady’s staff and social functions.

TRUMAN OVERHAUL 1948 TO 1952

Truman’s renovations represented the most significant overhaul of the building since its original construction. When he arrived in 1945, floors swayed as people walked on them, joints popped and cracked while rats scurried through holes in the walls, according to the historical association.

The $5.7 million overhaul dismantled the interior to replace weakened wooden beams and outdated plumbing and electrical systems, but kept the exterior walls. Truman gave his Cabinet members paperweights made out of pine from the house. People could pay $1 to order “one brick, as nearly whole as possible,” from the demolition.

Congressional Republicans questioned the costs during the post-war economy. The Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion faced pressure to balance modernization with preservation.

Felix de Weldon, a sculptor known for the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery and who provided advice during the reconstruction, said in an oral history the goal was to eliminate Victorian-period changes to the building except in the Abraham Lincoln bedroom and return the appearance to the Federal period. Moldings, paneling and fireplaces were carefully removed and preserved, he said.

“We tried to bring it back to the original beauty of the early Federal period because it is one of the most beautiful buildings,” De Weldon said.

The most controversial change was the addition of what became known as the Truman balcony to the second floor of the South Portico. Some architects said it clashed with the original Palladian style. Then-Rep. Frederick Muhlenberg, R-Pennsylvania, who himself worked in architecture, accused Truman of misappropriating the $16,000 for personal indulgence, according to the historical association.

William Hassett, a Truman secretary from 1945 to 1952, told an oral history that they chatted about the South Portico being out of balance with the rest of the building.

“The President had a good laugh at the mention of the ruckus he would create by tampering with the portico, and from the gleam in his eye I think he really wanted to have it moved,” Hassett said. “But that would be out-of-the-question, of course, as far as the public was concerned, so nothing came of it beyond the good laugh we had at the suggestion.”

KENNEDY ROSE GARDEN 1962

In 1962, President John Kennedy’s wife Jackie redesigned the foliage along the west colonnade, where first lady Edith Roosevelt had created a Colonial Garden in 1902 and where first lady Ellen Wilson had updated the Rose Garden in 1913, according to the historical association.

Jackie Kennedy had horticulturist Rachel Lambert Mellon create a formal garden inspired by French and English designs. President Richard Nixon’s daughter Tricia Nixon Cox got married in the garden in 1971. Trump gave her a tour Oct. 21 to show off first lady Melania Trump’s updates, which included paving the grassy area.

“It was in very bad shape, actually, and we brought it back to health,” Trump told Senate Republicans during a lunch Oct. 21. “Everything, brand-new, everything beautiful. The only thing we did is we had to get a hard surface here, because nobody could use it because of the grass.”

NIXON PRESS ROOM 1970

Nixon converted the indoor swimming pool, which was built in 1933 for Franklin Roosevelt’s physical therapy after suffering polio a decade earlier, into a press room for reporters in 1970.

Congressional Democrats said Nixon undermined the White House’s heritage to suit his media strategy with the $574,000 project, according to the historical association. The New York Times criticized the lost link to Roosevelt’s legacy a “sacrifice of history for convenience.”

The briefing room on the other side of the wall from the west colonnade now holds 49 chairs for when press secretaries routinely hold televised briefings. In 2000, the room was named for James Brady, the press secretary for President Ronald Reagan who was wounded in an assassination attempt in 1981.

TRUMP BALLROOM 2025

Trump announced in July he would build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom projected to hold up to 1,000 people. He said the $300 million cost would be covered by private donations.

Trump had argued a permanent ballroom was long needed because rooms weren't big enough inside the White House and tents set up on the south lawn often left guests with soggy feet.

“When it rains, it's a disaster,” Trump told reporters July 31. “It's not a pretty sight."

The destruction of the East Wing contradicted Trump’s July assurance that the new structure could be “near it but not touching it." The project led to a public outcry, including former first lady Hillary Clinton saying "he's destroying it" on social media Oct. 21.

But House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, who described himself as an “amateur historian,” defended the project as the latest improvement to the White House.

“President Trump is going to add the greatest improvement to the White House in the history of the building, since it was originally constructed in 1800,” Johnson told reporters Oct. 22. “The ballroom is going to be glorious. It’s going to be used for everybody. By the way, hey Democrats, if you win the White House back, you get to use it too. This is for the American people and he’s using private funds to do it. How in the world could they oppose that?”

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; whitehouse.org; architectmagazine.com; commonedge.org

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A piano through the floor: The controversial history of White House renovations

Reporting by Bart Jansen and Janet Loehrke, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect