Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Ballroom’ And Truman’s Contentious Balcony

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We wouldn’t be surprised if you missed this one. After all, August has been flooded with major breaking news. It’s a lot for a responsible citizen to keep up with. From the outrage over Sydney Sweeney wearing jeans more provocatively than anyone ever, the uproar over the first woman umpire to call a major league baseball game, and the tut-tutting over the Minnesota Vikings adding a couple of males to its cheerleader squad… it’s been quite a month. 

So you’re forgiven for not knowing U.S. president Donald Trump is making a huge addition to the White House.

In typical Trump style, the planned White House State Ballroom will be big – coming in at a whopping 90,000 square feet. Commendably, its estimated $200 million price tag will be paid for by private donations and not built at taxpayer expense. Architecturally, the exterior will be in harmony with the existing White House, though the proposed interior décor is already being widely panned. The 650-seat room relies heavily on garish gold.

What is Trump’s fixation with this precious metal? King Midas didn’t love it so much. But we digress.       

The White House tugs at Americans’ sentimental heartstrings unlike any other residence. And with good reason. The British couldn’t completely destroy it in 1814, Lincoln lived there (with its most famous bedroom still bearing his name) and it even withstood being gutted and rebuilt from within. Not a bad legacy for a building that’s more than 225 years old.

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So you would think a significant change to its design would be big news. You’d be wrong, though. Public reaction has been muted, barely perceptible.

Compare that to one of the very first White House additions. People were livid in 1801 when Thomas Jefferson built a simple wooden post and rail fence around the grounds to keep out livestock that grazed freely in the then sparsely populated District of Columbia. He decided that was too rustic a look for the chief executive’s residence. But when he replaced it with a metal fence in 1808, his administration caught holy hell. It was not in keeping with the democratic ideals of a Republic, detractors howled – and was especially unfitting for a residence already being called “the people’s house.”      

Various other improvements, additions, and enlargements from time to time also drew flak. But none of them compared to the sheer firestorm unleashed when Harry Truman announced his bold White House renovation plan.

Also, nobody knew Truman actually had a secret reason for his remodel…

Early one evening in February 1946, Truman summoned the White House’s chief usher to the second-floor Oval Study. He pointed out the window to the Washington Monument and the Potomac River beyond.

“That’s a magnificent sight,” he said.

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Then he dropped his bombshell.

“I’d like to take better advantage of the view,” Truman said. “I’m going to put a balcony there.”

Truman’s statement sent shock waves through Washington. While almost every president had made changes to the White House’s interior, some small and some significant, none had touched its iconic exterior since 1829, when Andrew Jackson had added the north portico to keep visitors from getting wet on rainy days.

Simply put, presidents didn’t monkey around with the White House’s appearance. Period.

Harry Truman was no fool. He knew his proposal would trigger a massive outcry. So he had his arguments and rationale ready to share with Congress, the news media, and the public. But he also had a deeply personal reason that he kept to himself.

First, the experts were on his side. They said adding a balcony would make the mansion’s south front more architecturally pleasing. In layman’s terms, long vertical lines (such as the original six stone columns which survived the Brits burning the place) look better when broken up by a horizontal line across the middle (such as a balcony).

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Then there were the cost savings. In the pre-air conditioning era, the mansion’s first floor sweltered during Washington’s tropical summers. Ugly canvas awnings were installed over ground-level windows for a bit of relief. Not only were they eyesores, they were also dust magnets. When hauled down in the fall, the awnings were so filthy they couldn’t be used again. Meaning a new batch had to be purchased every summer. By 1946, that was costing the government $20,000 a decade – more than $330,000 in today’s dollars. Adding a balcony would save Uncle Sam money in the long run.

Democrat Truman didn’t bother asking the Republican Congress for the $16,000 to fund the project, since “no” was a foregone conclusion. So he came up with the cash by making cuts to the president’s household account.

Then, in typical Truman fashion, he built his balcony.

When the fuss finally died down, even the critics grudgingly admitted it was an improvement. And the American people gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up.

The balcony became so widely respected, in fact, Republicans jokingly “thanked” Truman for improving the house for the man whom they were sure would replace him two years later, Thomas Dewey. But as we all know, things didn’t turn out that way.

Thirteen presidents have lived in the White House since Truman left it, and several said the balcony was one of their favorite spots. Besides providing one of the capital’s most impressive views, its breezy informality is a welcome break from the official stuffiness indoors. The Truman Balcony is, quite literally, the White House’s back porch.

Which brings us to Harry Truman’s real, secret reason for building it in the first place.

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Truman’s passion for his wife, Bess, is one of the presidency’s greatest love stories. He fell in love with her the first time he saw her in elementary school in Independence, Missouri, in 1890, and didn’t stop loving her until the day he died in 1972. He hated being apart from her.

While Bess loved Harry in return, she utterly loathed the spotlight that accompanied the presidency. Though she admirably performed her duties as First Lady, she jumped at any chance to return to their home in Independence, where she spent the entire summer of 1945, leaving a lonely Harry pining for her in the White House.

Their daughter Margaret later wrote, “One of the chief pleasures of 219 North Delaware Street [the Independence house] was its porches, particularly the back porch …” where the family whiled away summer evenings “secure from prying eyes.” The Trumans sat there for hours, reading, listening to baseball on the radio (Bess was a huge baseball fan), and playing cards. Bess savored the privacy.

Since Harry’s job wouldn’t permit him to share the back porch with his wife back home, he decided to bring the back porch to Washington.

He built the Truman Balcony in the hope it would convince his wife to stay with him during the summer months.

The plan didn’t work, though. While Bess appreciated the gesture and genuinely liked the new balcony, it wasn’t the same as her porch at home. And nothing, nothing at all, could overcome her burning desire to flee Washington, with or without her husband. The summer of 1946 found her back at 219 North Delaware Street.

The things we do for love, right?

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As for Trump’s “Big Beautiful Ballroom,” construction begins next month with the structure “expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term,” according to the White House.

Trump’s administration noted the ballroom “will be substantially separated from the main building of the White House, but at the same time, it’s theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical.”

 “President Trump is a builder at heart and has an extraordinary eye for detail,” his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, stated. “The President and the Trump White House are fully committed to working with the appropriate organizations to preserving the special history of the White House while building a beautiful ballroom that can be enjoyed by future Administrations and generations of Americans to come.” 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

J. Mark Powell is an award-winning former TV journalist, government communications veteran, and a political consultant. He is also an author and an avid Civil War enthusiast. Got a tip or a story idea for Mark? Email him at mark@fitsnews.com.

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