Harry S Truman National Historic Site

The white house at 219 North Delaware Street was built by Bess Wallace's grandfather, George Porterfield Gates, a partner in the town's flour mill, beginning in 1867, and enlarged in 1885 for $8,000. Bess moved in at eighteen with her mother and brothers after her father's suicide in 1903. When she married Harry Truman on June 28, 1919, he had put his money into a Kansas City haberdashery, so the couple moved in with her mother. The store failed in 1922 and they stayed while he paid off his debts. Their daughter, Margaret, was born in the house in 1924.

Truman left for the Senate in 1935, but this remained the family's Missouri home, and from 1945 to 1952 it was known as the Summer White House. He did not own it until July 1953, after his mother-in-law died. He kept his office here until his library opened in 1957, and he lived here until his death in 1972. Bess lived on until 1982 and left the house to the National Park Service, which opened it as a national historic site in 1983.

The ground floor holds the family's things where they left them: Margaret's Steinway, the books, Bess's mysteries among them, and the records. The second floor has never been opened, first by Bess's will and now for preservation. The site also includes the Wallace brothers' houses next door and the Noland house across the street, where Truman's cousins lived, and a separate unit, the family farm in Grandview.