Garrett M. Graff Quote

Then, one night, while daughter Margaret played the piano upstairs, the floor indeed gave way and the piano crashed through, sending plaster and rotted wood onto the executive mansion’s first floor below. The subsequent extensive and high-profile restoration provided the perfect cover to install a secret bomb shelter. On August 1, 1950, Truman’s naval aide, Robert Dennison, wrote a memo to the renovation team, explaining, The President has authorized certain protective measures which include alterations at basement level in and adjacent to the wings of the White House. The renovation had originally called for two basement levels of various utility and storage rooms. Instead, Dennison, aide David Stowe, and the project architect sketched out a large, heavily fortified facility

Garrett M. Graff

Then, one night, while daughter Margaret played the piano upstairs, the floor indeed gave way and the piano crashed through, sending plaster and rotted wood onto the executive mansion’s first floor below. The subsequent extensive and high-profile restoration provided the perfect cover to install a secret bomb shelter. On August 1, 1950, Truman’s naval aide, Robert Dennison, wrote a memo to the renovation team, explaining, The President has authorized certain protective measures which include alterations at basement level in and adjacent to the wings of the White House. The renovation had originally called for two basement levels of various utility and storage rooms. Instead, Dennison, aide David Stowe, and the project architect sketched out a large, heavily fortified facility

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About Garrett M. Graff

Garrett M. Graff (born 1981) is an American journalist and author. He is a former editor of Politico Magazine, editor-in-chief of Washingtonian magazine in Washington, D.C., and instructor at Georgetown University in the Master's in Professional Studies Journalism and Public Relations program.