Truman Home in Independence
The Truman Home (earlier known as the Gates-Wallace Home), 219 North Delaware Street, Independence, Missouri, was the home of Harry S Truman from the time of his marriage to Bess Wallace on June 28, 1919, until his death on December 26, 1972. Bess Truman's maternal grandfather, George Porterfield Gates, built the house over a period of years from 1867 to 1885.
After Bess's father, David Willock Wallace, committed suicide in 1903, she and her mother and brothers moved into the house with Bess's grandparents, George and Elizabeth Gates. At the time Harry and Bess married in 1919, Harry was putting all of his money into his business partnership, a men's clothing store called Truman & Jacobson at 104 West 12th Street in downtown Kansas City, so living at the Wallace home made good financial sense.
After the haberdashery failed, in 1922, Harry and Bess could not afford to move to a new home, so they continued living there while Harry paid off the debts from the store. That same year he went into politics, and eventually moved to Washington, D.C. with his wife and daughter after being elected to the Senate in 1935. Whenever they came back to Missouri, the house at 219 N. Delaware was their home.
The Truman Home offers a glimpse at the personal life of the 33rd President of the United States. Beautiful in its uncluttered commonness, the Truman Home showcases the simple life the family enjoyed in Independence before and after Harry's eight years as President. The Trumans' only child, Mary Margaret, was born in the home on February 17, 1924. The site also includes the two adjacent homes of Mrs. Truman's brothers, and, across Delaware Street, the Noland Home, where the President's favorite aunt and cousins lived. A brief film and guided tours of the site are available. The site operates a visitor's center, located inside an historic firehouse, in downtown Independence.
After he retired in 1953, until the Truman Library was opened on July 6, 1957, the Truman Home served as Mr. Truman's personal office.
Truman is probably one of the few Presidents who never owned his own home prior to his time in office. He lived with his parents until he married, then in the Wallace House, in rented apartments and houses in Washington (including 4701 Connecticut Avenue), in Blair House (the official state visitors residence), and in the White House, but it was not until July 1953, following his term of office and the December 1952 death of Madge Gates Wallace, that Harry and Bess Truman purchased the home at 219 North Delaware Street.
The house is now located in the Harry S. Truman Historic District, a National Historic Landmark site.
Read more about this topic: Harry S. Truman National Historic Site
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“When you get to be President, there are all those things, the honors, the twenty-one gun salutes, all those things. You have to remember it isn’t for you. It’s for the Presidency.”
—Harry S. Truman (1884–1972)
“With a generous endowment of motherhood provided by legislation, with all laws against voluntary motherhood and education in its methods repealed, with the feminist ideal of education accepted in home and school, and with all special barriers removed in every field of human activity, there is no reason why woman should not become almost a human thing. It will be time enough then to consider whether she has a soul.”
—Crystal Eastman (1881–1928)
“The subject of the novel is reality liberated from soul. The reader in complete independence presented with a structured process: let him evaluate it, not the author. The façade of the novel cannot be other than stone or steel, flashing electrically or dark, but silent.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)