America's most famous fixer-upper! New book reveals President Truman ordered $54m White House renovation after he nearly fell through floor onto dinner guests while he was in the bath with 'nothing on but his reading glasses'

Harry Truman was taking a bath when he and it nearly crashed through the ceiling onto a ball where Members of Daughters of The American Revolutionaries partying in their finery

He then ordered the long overdue reconstruction in which 66 rooms including the Oval Office were ripped apart leaving just one enormous space behind the famous facade

Its famous occupants were haunted by 'ghostly' noises of creaking timber, trembling floors and knocking pipes

Author Robert Klara carried out five years of research at the Truman Library to pull together the secret history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Construction began on December 13, 1949 and it was due to cost $5.7m - $54m in today’s money - and lasted 660 days

Underground bunker was added at a cost $881,000 and was was behind 7ft thick walls with 9ft ceiling of poured concrete in its roof in case of a nuclear blast


President Truman commissioned the complete rebuilding of the White House after nearly falling through the floor while having bath as hundreds of dignitaries attended a ball below him.

Members of Daughters of The American Revolutionaries partying in their finery would have been showered with water and plaster had Truman crashed through - wearing nothing but his reading glasses.

Truman’s energetic bathing caused the largest chandelier in the Blue Room, which was bigger than a fridge and weighed 1,200lbs, to shake violently and nearly come down as well.

Death trap: The White House renovation was ordered by Truman in 1949 after an official report said: ' it wouldn't pass the safety standard of any city in the country'

Gutted: By mid-1950, steel holds up the roof and the sandstone walls while a bulldozer excavates the new basements. The house, Truman wrote 'is nothing but a shell'

Creaking: What remained of Truman's Oval Study (top left) and Blue Room (below left). Dry and riddled with cracks, these wooden beams had caused the floor to shake when walked on. Meanwhile, summoned by Truman to investigate the White House's ghostly groans and trembling floors, engineers discovered deep cracks in the floor beams and walls (right)

Little did he know that the giant 131-year-old Virginia pine beam holding him and the second floor up was at breaking point - much like the rest of the White House.

That near miss, not to mention a number of others, led to complete gutting of the entire building, one of the grandest and most revered properties in the United States.

During the reconstruction 66 rooms including the Oval Office were ripped apart leaving just one enormous space behind the famous facade, as shown by these stunning pictures.

While it looked exactly the same from the street, inside one million feet of cubic space stood between the walls with steel girders and catwalks criss crossing it.

As President Truman put it himself at the time: ‘The old building is nothing but a shell’.

The mammoth undertaking is detailed like never before in a new book called The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America’s Most Famous Residence, which has been seen by MailOnline.

Author Robert Klara carried out five years of research at the Truman Library to pull together the secret history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and how it came to be the building it is today.

He tells how the property needed to be rebuilt due to the effects of a century of Presidents fiddling with a home that wasn’t designed for the modern age.

He writes that 'like an old hotel - or a reusable coffin - it was simply cleaned and shined for the next occupant'.

It seems inconceivable now but Truman and his family lived in the White House for several months while it was a death trap because he didn’t want to leave in the months before the 1948 Presidential Election.

Bunker: A rare photo of 'The Tunnel', the steel-and-concrete artery that ran through the White House's lower basement level. The Tunnel connected the West and East Wings and access to the atomic shelter which Truman ordered built after the Russians successfully detonated their first nuclear bomb - deepening the Cold War

Let there be light: Electricians send the current through one of the restored 1902 Caldwell chandeliers in the East Room. Even though the enormous fixtures had been shortened, Truman still called them 'monstrosities'. In all the renovation came in on budget at $5.7m - $54m at today's rates. But it was, as with all construction jobs, late

By 1946 Truman had decided to start hosting state events again after the sombre mood of the Second World War had lifted.

BOWLING ALLEY AND SOLAR PANELS: A BRIEF HISTORY OF 1600 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE 1792 Construction begins on the White House, designed by Irish architect James Hoban and influenced by the upper floors of Leinster House, in Dublin, Ireland 1800 Construction finished, President John Adams, the second President of the United States, moves in on November 1 1811 First recorded mention of the building being called the ‘White House’ 1814 White House badly burned and ransacked by the British but later rebuilt 1880s President Chester Arthur orders renovations and infamously gets rid of 20 wagonloads of historic furniture which were auctioned off 1901 West Wing added under President Theodore Roosevelt 1942 East Wing added under President Franklin Roosevelt. He also ordered the redesign of the White House garden 1949 Truman renovation and installation of underground nuclear bunker 1961 Jackie Kennedy begins extensive restoration by asking wealthy individuals to donate paintings and antiques 1969 President Richard Nixon installs an underground bowling alley 2013 President Barack Obama installs solar panels on the White House roof

As the chandelier began to swing Truman’s wife Bess, who was entertaining the guests downstairs, realised that it could kill one of them if it fell.He invited hundreds of Daughters of the American Revolution to the Blue Room and, whilst they mingled downstairs, he had a bath upstairs to get ready.

She sent assistant usher J.B. West up the stairs to find out what was going on - only for him to be told that ‘the boss’ was just taking a bath. The house simply couldn’t take it.

When the drama was later explained to Truman, Klara writes that he ‘burst out laughing’.

The book says: ‘Conjuring the image of his bathtub - with him inside it - falling through the floor allowing him to salute the Daughters of the American Revolution wearing nothing more than his reading glasses.

‘That would have been something’, the president exclaimed, chuckling on. 'Bess Truman was not amused’.

The previous year Truman had got his first taste of another reason to renovate - the White House ‘ghosts’. He was working in the Oval Office and heard ‘shuffling up and down the empty corridor outside'.

On another night he was woken at 4am by somebody pounding three times on the outside of his bedroom door. When he went to look there was nobody there - but he heard footsteps. It was almost certainly the wooden beams inside the house, but that was no consolation.

Worse things happened soon after. Truman walked out of the Oval Study on the second floor and nearby fell down a hole through which he could see the first floor as workmen carried out emergency repairs.

The plaster in the Red Room cracked, a burst pipe in another shorted the circuitry and forced some tourists to evacuate. The greatest danger to the house was fire especially as there was just the main staircase as the only way for the President to escape in the event of a fire.

President Roosevelt, Truman’s predecessor whose polio restricted his mobility, would have actually been put on a canvas chute outside of his bedroom window and slid down to the lawn where a car would be waiting to take him away if a blaze happened.

In January 1948 Truman had seen a report that said the entire second floor was about to fall down.

But by then in a stroke of bad luck he had spent $1.6m of Congressional money on balcony on the South Portico for Bess that she ended up not even using as people gawked at her from the street.

W.E. Reynolds, the Commissioner of Public Buildings at the time, told a committee looking into the repairs that the White House 'wouldn't pass the safety standard of any city in the country'. The room fell silent when they realised the President and his family were listening.

Can I come down now? The massive room that replaced the insides of the White House was 168ft east to west, 82ft across and 80ft up. That is big enough to lay the Statue of Liberty down on her back and have 17ft to spare. Picture here is the main staircase

Tough: Bess Truman remarked that when she first saw the White House: 'I was so depressed when I saw it'. The couple moved back to the more modest surroundings of their house in Independence, Missouri in 1953. Their struggle to make the DC property safe is documented in the most exhaustive detail to date by Robert Klara

Aside from the Blue Room incident, the turning point was when Margaret, one of Truman’s daughters, was playing the piano on the second floor in what is now the private dining room. As she and her sister sang a particular exuberant number they felt the floor move and a leg of the piano broke through the floor. They could have easily followed.

Construction began on December 13 1949 and it was due to cost $5.7m - $54m in today’s money - and lasted 660 days. During this time the Trumans lived in Blair House, the White House's official guest residence.

The plan was to put in new foundations driven down another 22ft to a gravel lawyer whilst everything behind the facade was ripped out.

It was a ‘gut job’ as is known in the trade and it was an epic undertaking. The massive room that replaced the insides of the White House was 168ft East to West, 82ft across and 80ft up.

Falling down: In January 1948 Truman had seen a report that said the entire second floor was about to fall down

Sold off: Many of the original features were catalogued to be replaced later but were in fact sold off. Klara writes: 'Seldom had an act of Congress created something as tacky yet undeniably exciting as this'

Exposed: Weeks into the interior demolition, stripped plaster and lath on the second floor reveal 135-year-old-timber. This framework dated from the house's first rebuilding, following the British fire of 1814

That is big enough to lay the Statue of Liberty down on her back and have 17ft to spare.

Huge steel columns normally used in skyscrapers that were 3ft thick and 22ft long were brought in and attached using rivets the size of doorknobs. Forty ironworkers maneuvered each girder in through an opening in a window with just nine inches to spare on either side, to ensure that the facade was not ruined.

They were then used to make a load-bearing steel frame that would hold up the White House.

Everything which had been inside was numbered up, catalogued and put into storage with renowned New York interior designers B. Altman & Co. including the wainscoting and the fireplaces.

The plan was that they could be reassembled later on but in a staggering decision much of it was sold off as souvenirs by a specially set up commission which hawked everything from unwanted wood to plates with the words: 'Original White House Material - Removed in 1950' on them.

Klara writes: ‘Seldom had an act of Congress created something as tacky yet undeniably exciting as this’.

Secrets: The plans for the bunker are still not declassified, but it is known Two stairways led down to it, one in the East Wing, the other in the garden and the entrance was behind a four-inch thick steel door with a retractable slit at eye level

Well connected: Workers taking care of the ducts. The renovation was finally completed in 1952, nearly twice as long as had been expected

Klara writes that whole place had been 'infested with rats', with one especially large rodent making an appearance at a lunch in front of guests.

Another new addition to the house was an underground bunker which was added after the Russians detonated their first nuclear bomb in September 1949 and Cold War paranoia reached fever pitch. It cost $881,000 and was was behind 7ft thick walls with 9ft ceiling of poured concrete in its roof in case of a nuclear blast.

Two stairways led down to it, one in the East Wing, the other in the garden and the entrance was behind a four-inch thick steel door with a retractable slit at eye level.

The shelter was kept secret from the public although its existence eventually leaked out. Despite it being 60 years since the shelter was built, the blueprints are still restricted from the public view. The only description is from the private diary of Roger Wellington Tubby, Truman’s assistant press secretary between 1952 and 1953.

He says that past the main door is a shower room and a large chamber with 40 Army issue cots for sleeping. Branching off the main room are several smaller chambers, a pantry and an 8ft by 10ft room for use by the Trumans complete with four bunk beds and a ready stocked book shelf.

The President could have survived down there for weeks if necessary as it had its own supply of food, water, medical room and a diesel powered communications room.

Infested: Klara writes that whole place had been 'infested with rats', with one especially large rodent making an appearance at a lunch in front of guests

Changing face: The original White House was badly burned by the British as they attacked the City of Washington in 1814 (left). After being rebuilt it went through many modifications. Seen above right in the 1920s

Today's glory: The White House as it stands today. Presidents since have added their own additions. Nixon built a bowling alley and Obama has installed solar panels

The White House renovation was finally completed in 1952, nearly twice as long as had been expected. But surprisingly it was almost budget. Truman was effectively cleaning up the mess that had been left by the previous 22 occupants of the White House going back to James Polk, the 11th President of the United States.

Klara writes that whole place had been 'infested with rats', with one especially large rodent making an appearance at a lunch in front of guests.

When Bess Truman made her initial inspection, she was heart broken to see that chairs were falling apart and carpets were threadbare.

The night of April 19, 1945 she wrote in her diary that when she first laid eyes on the White House: 'I was so depressed when I saw it'.

Little did she know that the real work hadn’t even started.

The Hidden White House: Harry Truman and the Reconstruction of America's Most Famous Residence, by Robert Klara, published by Thomas Dunne, is out now. To buy click here.