Establishing the Truman Presidential Library

Establishing the Truman Presidential Library was Harry S. Truman’s most consequential post-presidential building project. It transformed the former president’s attachment to history and public service into a national institution in Independence, where his papers could be preserved, studied, and made available to the public. Its creation depended not on a federal appropriation but on a town’s gift of land, a countrywide fundraising campaign, and Truman’s determination to oversee the project as a continuing public undertaking.

A Site Chosen by the Hometown

After the Trumans returned to Independence, local interest in their presence grew strikingly. Sightseers passed along North Delaware Street, and the town’s welcome home became a civic gesture as well as a personal one. The largest and most generous gesture was the donation of Slover Park as the library site. Truman was delighted: Independence seemed more appropriate than Grandview, Missouri, and more accessible to visitors. The quiet, picturesque park occupied a 13-acre knoll just beyond U.S. Highway 24 and lay about a mile from 219 North Delaware Street, an easy walk for Truman. Building at Grandview instead would have required giving up valuable farmland and imposing a substantial financial sacrifice on Truman and his siblings, Vivian Truman and Mary Jane Truman.

The site also made the library an expression of local belonging rather than a monument detached from the life that had formed Truman. The Kansas City Times endorsed Independence as the logical place for a national shrine to a statesman whose home city, it observed, had set partisanship aside. Truman’s pleasure in the gift reflected more than convenience: the town was entrusting part of its public landscape to a project meant to connect his own record with the country’s history.

Fundraising as Another Campaign

Truman threw himself into raising the money. He attended dinners, delivered speeches around the country, and wrote thousands of letters. A fundraising auction at the National Guard Armory in Independence lasted seven hours. The federal government would contribute nothing toward creating the library, so the task fell to Truman and his supporters. In a year and a half he raised more than $1 million. His pace was so intense that Margaret Truman Daniel later recalled that it terrified her.

The private campaign widened into a national undertaking. By the time the library was dedicated, it had received some 17,000 contributions, large and small, from across the country. Labor organizations and individual donors supplied substantial sums: the United Steelworkers contributed $250,000, while the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and the American Federation of Musicians each gave $10,000. John L. Lewis also contributed $10,000. Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Ed Pauley, and William Clayton made major private gifts. Truman acknowledged every contribution, whatever its amount. The financing thus reflected a broad network of civic, labor, and personal support, assembled through the former president’s own work rather than a government grant.

The fundraising drive was not separate from Truman’s other post-presidential labor. He was also writing his memoirs, but that project expanded far beyond its original contract: by early 1955 the manuscript had reached about two million words, against a contracted 300,000. Life agreed to accept 580,000 words after negotiations, and the publisher Doubleday planned two volumes. The library, by contrast, became the achievement the book describes as an unqualified success. Truman’s sustained effort to raise money and build an institution gave his later life a practical focus beyond the manuscript.

From Groundbreaking to Public Institution

On May 8, 1955, Truman’s seventy-first birthday, about two thousand people gathered in Slover Park for a home-style groundbreaking. With band music playing, he turned the first spade of earth. The ceremony was followed by an unusual act of hospitality: he and Bess Wallace Truman hosted a buffet dinner at home for about 150 guests. Margaret remembered her mother standing at the entrance to her private sanctuary to welcome them. The project had brought public ceremony to the family home, while the family’s welcome marked the occasion as more than a formal civic event.

The new building was dedicated on July 6, 1957, and Truman moved from the Federal Reserve Bank Building into offices at the library. The dedication drew about five thousand people, including former President Herbert Hoover, Eleanor Roosevelt, Speaker Samuel Rayburn, four senators, nine governors, Dean Acheson, John Snyder, former White House staff, relatives, and neighbors. Earl Warren, then Chief Justice of the United States, delivered the main address. Truman’s wish to become a grandfather and his wish to see his library established had both been fulfilled: his grandson, Clifton Truman Daniel, had been born in June, and the library was now open.

Designed by local architect Alonzo H. Gentry with Edward Neild, the long, low, crescent-shaped building was faced with Indiana limestone. Its style resisted easy categorization: the design appeared modern, while the square-columned entrance suggested a classical Egyptian influence. Though one story high, it contained 70,000 square feet including its full basement. Completed in two years, it had cost $1.8 million. The scale made room not simply for a presidential office or a commemorative display, but for a substantial working collection.

Preserving Records and Shaping Historical Memory

At the dedication, Warren presented the library as a place where Truman’s papers would be preserved so that his administration could become one of history’s clearest periods. The institution was intended as both museum and library: a place to safeguard and exhibit its resources, and to enable their use by the American people and visitors from around the world. That purpose made preservation active rather than merely custodial. The papers were to support public understanding of the nation and its times, and to inform choices in the years ahead.

The library already held 3.5 million documents at its dedication, a collection expected to grow as Truman administration figures, including Dean Acheson, added their own papers. Truman also persuaded Congress, working through Representative John McCormack, to index and microfilm existing presidential papers. He argued that the work should have been undertaken generations earlier; before he raised the issue, no one had made the effort. The library therefore formed part of a broader push to make presidential records more systematically accessible, not just a repository for Truman’s own administration.

The book sets this undertaking within a longer record of Truman as a builder and planner. As presiding judge of the Jackson County Court, he had overseen a road program whose promised roads were built within the approved funds. He also published a handsome, photograph-filled booklet, Results of County Planning, presenting roads, bridges, farms, schools, and historic sites as elements of a landscape that progress should enhance rather than erase. Later, the restoration of the White House gave him another role as a guardian of a democratic symbol. The library extended those earlier concerns from roads and buildings to the documentary record: it would preserve evidence of public life and place it within reach of future readers.

Once the library was established and operating in Independence, it became the focus of Truman’s life. The work did not preserve every part of the landscape that mattered to him. With the library in place, about 224 acres of the Truman land at Grandview were sold for development, while the farmhouse, barn, and immediate acreage stayed in the family. The former farmland where Solomon Young had settled and where Truman had worked was giving way to suburban growth. Against that loss, the library offered a different form of continuity: not the preservation of the family farm, but the deliberate safeguarding of records through which the public could examine Truman’s times and administration.