How much have major White House renovations cost over the past 100 years?

When President Truman moved into the White House in the late 1940s, he thought the building was haunted. Chandeliers swayed. Floors creaked. Drapes fluttered.

Inspectors eventually found the “ghost”: the 150-year-old structure was on the verge of collapse. One described it as standing “from force of habit only.”

The solution? A drastic one — gut the interior of the Executive Residence, the central building where the first family lives, while preserving the historic exterior. To fund the project, Truman requested $5.4 million (around $72 million in today’s dollars) from Congress.

Seventy-five years later, the White House is again under construction, this time to build a ballroom where the East Wing once stood. This is far from the first time the White House has been under construction since the Truman administration, but the estimated price tag and private donor funding have prompted questions amongst officials and the public.

To understand how the cost of the new ballroom compares to past renovations, USAFacts reviewed government documents to identify how much money was requested from Congress or raised through private donations for some of the largest White House projects of the past century.

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