Please note that the following is a digitized version of a selected article from White House History Quarterly, Issue 61, originally released in print form in 2021. Single print copies of the full issue can be purchased online at Shop.WhiteHouseHistory.org No part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All photographs contained in this journal unless otherwise noted are copyrighted by the White House Historical Association and may not be reproduced without permission. Requests for reprint permissions should be directed to rights@whha.org. Contact books@whha.org for more information. © 2021 White House Historical Association. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions.
THE BATHTUB HOAX and Other Memorable Times in the History of White House Plumbing
NATIONAL ARCHIV ES
DANNY HEITMAN
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Two workmen begin the process of gutting a White House bathroom in 1950, during the Truman renovation. They are working on the northwest corner of the Second Floor, which has a view of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. opposite
H. L. Mencken’s satirical article, “A Neglected Anniversary,” published in the New York Evening Mail in 1917, was accepted as true by many readers, including President Harry S. Truman. The story, which credited President Millard Fillmore for popularizing the bathtub in America by installing one in the White House, later became known as “The Bathtub Hoax.”
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Considered an “elite oddity,” the indoor water closets President Thomas Jefferson installed at the White House would have been similar in construction to this extant north privy he installed at his home, Monticello.
i n t h e pa n t h e o n o f a m e r i c a n p r e s i d e n t s , Millard Fillmore, who led the nation between 1850 and 1853, does not often get much attention. But Fillmore’s star rose a bit on December 28, 1917, when the New York Evening Mail published a commentary by the gadfly journalist H. L. Mencken crediting Fillmore with popularizing the bathtub in America. As Mencken told readers, skittish Americans were afraid that such immersive bathing might make them sick. But according to Mencken, after Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House, fellow citizens quickly embraced the president’s example. By 1860, Mencken noted, “every hotel in New York had a bathtub, and some had two and even three.”1 Thanks to Mencken, Fillmore had finally earned a place in popular posterity. The only complication was that the Evening Mail article was not true. Mencken had meant it as a mock history, a satire of what he viewed as his country’s backward ways. Even so, much to Mencken’s surprise, what came to be known as “The Bathtub Hoax” took on a life of its own. “Clippings circulated across the country; Mencken’s hoax was reprinted in newspapers, magazines and books,” biographer Marion Elizabeth Rodgers points out. “It was alluded to on the floor of Congress, became the subject of talks in weekly luncheons of Kiwanis clubs, and was discussed solemnly in England and on the Continent.”2 Nearly a decade later, Mencken lamented that the “facts” of his “Bathtub Hoax” were still being accepted as actual historical research.3 Despite his disavowals, Mencken’s tongue-in-cheek tribute to Fillmore has continued to pull legs for decades. In a 1951 interview with New Yorker writer John Hersey, President Harry S. Truman repeated the Fillmore bathtub story with complete earnestness. Even after a nearby aide corrected the president, Hersey reported, Truman “seemed reluctant to let go of his belief.”4 By then, Mencken had been sidelined from public life after a debilitating stroke in 1948.5 But he would not have been surprised, one gathers, by the seeming immortality of his spoof. “What ails the truth,” Mencken had written in 1926, “is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull.”6 But the real history of White House plumbing is not dull at all, as evidenced by Truman himself, who would play an important role in its evolution. Truman, an avid amateur historian and raconteur, might start this story with his long-ago predecessor,
Thomas Jefferson, the second chief executive to occupy the presidential mansion. Jefferson, an inspired tinkerer and inventor, wasted little time after his 1801 Inauguration in innovating his new home’s primitive bathroom facilities. The mansion’s outside privy was demolished. “A presidential necessary house in full view of the public must have struck the fastidious Jefferson as ludicrous,” notes the White House historian William Seale. “Two water closets were to be installed upstairs, in the narrow corner rooms on the south side. The president knew exactly the kind he wanted.” Jefferson specified water closets “which are prepared so as to be cleansed constantly by a Pipe throwing Water through them at command from a reservoir above.”7 He had installed similar water closets at his private home at Monticello, perhaps because he had grown accustomed to them while living in Paris. “Jefferson’s indoor privies were more the elite oddity than the norm, according to contemporaneous accounts,” W. Hodding Carter writes in his history of plumbing. “Visitors to the fledgling United States often complained of the lack of English conveniences and the awfulness of having to go outdoors to relieve themselves.”8
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Roosevelt undertook a more extensive renovation of the White House in 1901, adding new bathrooms in the Private Quarters.13 But it is his successor, William Howard Taft, who is the subject of one of the most frequently told apocryphal stories in presidential bathing history. Many historians have repeated the tale that Taft, known for his girth, had a massive bathtub installed in the White House, one big enough to hold four of the workmen who did the job.14 Such accounts even provide specifics about the tub, including that it, “lay nearly at the exact center of the house—exactly where the interior brick walls, unable to share the burden with the stronger stone walls on the mansion’s exterior, were least capable of holding it up.”15 The story however, cannot be verified. The White House Office of the Curator cannot confirm that Taft ever had a large tub installed in the White
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Theodore Roosevelt’s 1902 White House renovations included the addition of seven new bathrooms in the Private Quarters. As seen in this southeast corner detail from Roosevelt’s Second Floor furnishings plan, the new bathrooms were similar in design to today’s bathrooms.
B R U C E W H I T E F O R T H E W H I T E H O U S E H I S T O R I C A L A S S O C I AT I O N / W H I T E H O U S E C O L L E C T I O N
There is some irony in Jefferson, who prided himself on plain manners, bringing such a perceived luxury to “the people’s house.” There is irony, too, in Andrew Jackson, an iconic populist, overseeing another great leap forward in presidential plumbing—indoor running water. During Jackson’s presidency, the engineer Robert Leckie devised a system to bring water from a spring at Franklin Square into the White House through iron pipes. “Since the pipes had to carry water to lofty heights inside the house, hand pumps provided the necessary pressure,” Seale writes.9 Such plumbing was out of reach at the time for most Americans. “The beauty of clean, potable water, and the wonder of having it inside the house at the turn of a handle, rather escapes twenty-first-century sensibilities,” Seale adds. “There was something especially lovely about it in an age when water was hauled in buckets and one drank from creeks and wells and, with good reason, feared bad water.” But the grandeur of plumbing in Jackson’s White House did not stop there. “One luxury usually leads to another, even in the house of a chieftain of the common man,” Seale tells readers. “Very soon, in either late 1833 or early 1834, a bathing room was created in the east wing to take further advantage of the ready water supply. All that is known of the room is that it had a hot bath, a cold bath, and a shower bath. Coal fires under large copper boilers heated the water.”10 Period plumbing had its perils. According to one theory, William Henry Harrison’s death in 1841 after only one month in office was the result of enteric fever contracted from drinking contaminated water from the White House pipes.11 But over the years, progress continued. Under President Franklin Pierce, who took office in 1853, the White House added permanent bathing facilities with piped water on the Second Floor, the first above the basement level. Shortly after Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House in 1861, marble-topped washstands and sinks were installed in most of the rooms in the Private Quarters, serviced by piped-in river water for washing.12 By the time President Chester A. Arthur assumed office in 1881, the White House plumbing— and the rest of the house—was showing its age. He pushed to tear down the mansion and build a new one but was unsuccessful. As a consolation prize, Arthur secured an overhaul of the pipes and an upgraded septic system. President Theodore
HATHI TRUST
An article in a 1909 issue of Engineer Review included the now-famous photograph of four men sitting in the bathtub of “pond like” proportions that was used by President-Elect William Howard Taft during a trip to Panama aboard the USS North Carolina. white house history quarterly
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Blair House, officials gutted the interior of the White House and rebuilt it from the basement up— the most extensive renovation of the mansion ever undertaken. Among other upgrades, the number of bathrooms grew from fourteen to nineteen.20 Herman Perlman, a workman placing glass in Truman’s new bathroom, recalled etching a private message onto the back of some marble being installed near the tub: “In this tub bathes the man whose heart is always clean and serves his people truthfully.”21 With the renovations on Truman’s watch complete, the modernized White House bathrooms seemed up to the task of serving generations of new presidents. But after President Lyndon Baines Johnson moved into the White House in 1963, he was not happy with his private bath. Kate Anderson Brower, author of a book about behind-the-scenes life at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, says Johnson wanted a White House shower “like nothing the
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Abbie Rowe, a principal photographer of the Truman renovation, captured a mirror image of himself at work while documenting a newly installed bathroom, 1952. Today the White House has approximately thirty-five bathrooms.
NATIONAL ARCHIV ES AND R EC OR DS ADMINISTRATION
House.16 In fact, Taft himself denied he acquired a special tub for the White House.17 Structural challenges, whether caused by Taft’s bathtub as some believe, or not, would help shape a White House bathtub moment for Truman in 1946. While hosting a reception for the Daughters of the American Revolution in the White House Blue Room, First Lady Bess Truman noticed that its grand Pendeloque chandelier was trembling. Upstairs, the president was taking a bath. The swaying light fixture had been caused by a weakness in the ceiling. Learning of the problem, the president, Klara writes, “burst out laughing, conjuring the image of his bathtub—with him inside it—falling through the floor, allowing him to salute the Daughters of the American Revolution wearing nothing more than his reading glasses.”18 An extensive inspection of the White House revealed deep and dangerous structural concerns.19 With the Trumans relocated across the street at
adds, “but he had his own bathroom eccentricities, asking for a calming whirlpool bathtub to be put in its place.” “Finding ways to relax in general seemed to occupy much of the president’s time,” Traphes Bryant, a longtime White House electrician, told Brower.24 What Bryant said of Nixon is probably true of any commander-in-chief. For presidents who undertake the world’s most public job, their bathrooms offer a rare chance for respite and retreat. Yet even there, it seems, some memorable history gets made. Mencken, even if he had stuck to the facts of presidential bathrooms, would still have had a great story to tell.
notes 1. H. L. Mencken, “A Neglected Anniversary,” New New York York Evening Evening Mail, Mail, December 28, 1917. See also H. L. Mencken, T The he Bathtub Bathtub Hoax and Other Other Blasts Blasts and and Bravos Bravos from from the the Chicago Tribune, ed. Hoax and Robert McHugh (New York: Octagon Books, 1985), 3–10. 2. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, M Mencken, Iconoclast: encken, The The American American Iconoclast: The Life Life and and Times Times of The of the the Bad Bad Boy Boy of of Baltimore Baltimore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 180. 3. H. L. Mencken, “Melancholy Reflections,” Chicago Chicago Tribune, Tribune, May Bathtub Hoax, Hoax, ed. McHugh, 23, 1926, reprinted in Mencken, Bathtub 10–15. 4. John Hersey, “Mr. President: IV, Ghosts in the White House,” New Yorker, Yorker, April 28, 1951, 44–45. New Mencken, 5. Rodgers, M encken, 528. 6. Mencken, “Melancholy Reflections,” 17.
GRANGER GRANGER
The he President’s President’s House: House: A A History, History, 2nd ed. 7. William Seale, T (Washington, D.C.: White House Historical Association, 2008), 1:88, including quotation from Jefferson.
President President Lyndon Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Johnson Johnson is sometimes is sometimes is sometimesfor the remembered remembered for the remembered extremely powerful for the extremely powerful extremely water pressure powerful of his water pressure of water pressure customized White of his customized his customized House shower. A White House White House cartoon titled “A shower. A cartoon shower.Man,” Brave A cartoon made titled “A Brave titled by Cy “A Hungerford Brave Man,” made by Cy Man,” for the made Pittsburgh by Cy Hungerford for the Hungerford fordepicts Post-Gazette, the Pittsburgh PostPittsburgh LBJ bracingPostto be Gazette, depicts Gazette, belted bydepicts a flurry of LBJ bracing to be LBJpens. ink bracing Thetocartoon be belted by a flurry belted is today byreadily a flurry of ink pens. The of ink pens. available onThe shower cartoon is today cartoon isperhaps curtains, today in readily available readily available homage to Johnson’s on shower curtains, on shower brave approach curtains, to perhaps in homage perhaps in homage showering. to Johnson’s to Johnson’s brave approach to brave approach to showering.
staff had ever seen: water charging out of multiple nozzles in every direction with needlelike intensity and a hugely powerful force. . . . Johnson wanted the water pressure at the White House to be just like his shower at home—the equivalent of a fire hose—and he wanted a simple switch to change the temperature from hot to cold immediately. Never warm.” To accommodate Johnson’s specifications, “plumbers even had a special water tank installed with its own pump to up the pressure, and added six different nozzles located at different heights so the spray would hit every part of the body,” Brower writes. “The pumps sprayed hundreds of gallons of water per minute—more than a fire hose.”22 But Johnson’s successor, Richard Nixon, did not care for LBJ’s unconventional plumbing fixture. Seale writes that soon after Johnson’s exit from office in 1969, his “powerful shower bath was removed, having knocked Nixon flat when he first turned it on.”23 “Nixon may have discarded Johnson’s industrial-strength shower,” Brower
Flushed: lushed: How 8. W. Hodding Carter, F How the the Plumber Plumber Saved Saved Civilization (New York: Atria Books, 2006), 157, 158. Civilization President’s resident’s House, House, 1:197. 9. Seale, P 10. Ibid. 11. Richard Norton Smith, “Two on John Tyler: Tippecanoe and Wall Street Tyler Too!,” Wall Street Journal, Journal, June 5, 2020. President’s resident’s House, House, 1:309, 368. 12. Seale, P 13. Ibid., 1:516–18, 650. The he Bully Bully Pulpit: Pulpit: Theodore Theodore Roosevelt, 14. Doris Kearns Goodwin, T Roosevelt, William Howard William Howard Taft Taft and and the the Golden Golden Age Age of of Journalism Journalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), insert, plate 54. The he Hidden Hidden White White House: House: Harry Truman and and the the 15. Robert Klara, T Harry Truman Reconstruction of of America’s America’s Most Most Famous Famous Residence Reconstruction Residence (New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2013), 80. 16. Correspondence with Office of the Curator, The White House, April 2021. William Howard Taft, “Remarks of President Taft,” August 5, 17. Mac Barnett, President Taft Is Stuck in the Bath (Somerville, 1910, quoted in Edmund J. Carpenter, The Pilgrims and Their Massachusetts: Candlewick Press, 2014). Monument (New York: Appleton, 18. Klara, The Hidden WhiteD.House, 1–7. 1911), 256.
18. Ibid., Klara, 57–58. The Hidden White House, 1–7. 1–7. 19. 19. Ibid., 20. David57–58. McCullough, Truman ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 20. 1992), David McCullough, Truman ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 880. 1992), 880. 21. Quoted in Klara, Hidden White House, 238.
21. Quoted in Klara, HiddenTWhite House, 238. 22. Kate Anderson Brower, he Residence: Inside the Private World 22. of Kate Brower, he Residence: Private theAnderson White House (NewTYork: Harper, Inside 2015), the 126–27, 128.World of the White HouseHouse, (New 2:399. York: Harper, 2015), 126–27, 128. 23. Seale, President’s 23. Brower, Seale, President’s House, 2:399. quotation from Bryant. 24. Residence, 157, including 24. Brower, Residence, 157, including quotation from Bryant.
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