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Original brick from the president’s bedroom in the White House, 8.25 x 2.5 x 3.75, removed from the walls of the second-floor bedroom during President Harry S. Truman’s historic White House Reconstruction project of 1949 to 1952. The top of the brick bears an affixed typed caption: “Hand-made brick from the President's bedroom in the White House. This is a bit larger than today's standard and obtained through the kindness of one of the staff at the time of reconstruction and when all materials which were not used to preserve tradition, etc., were to be buried at Fort Myer, across the river.”
During President Harry S. Truman’s 1949–1952 reconstruction of the White House, the Commission on the Renovation of the Executive Mansion oversaw both the structural modernization of the building and the orderly disposition of surplus materials generated by the project. With Truman’s approval in February 1950, an official souvenir program was established, informed by recommendations from the Advisory Board on National Parks, Historic Sites, Buildings and Monuments, which classified removed materials into four categories based on historical significance and practical value. Items of major architectural or historical importance were preserved for the White House or distributed to museums, while purely utilitarian materials were reassigned to government construction projects.
Other durable materials—such as bricks, timbers, and stone—whose primary value lay in their association with the White House were designated for controlled release through the souvenir program as authenticated mementos, while materials deemed unusable or lacking preservation value were buried or destroyed at Fort Myer, Virginia. A brick removed from the President’s bedroom during the reconstruction, retained with identifying documentation rather than reused or discarded, most closely aligns with a Class III item, which was described as ‘pieces of durable material, such as timbers, bricks, facing stones, and paneling, of some possible value for practical use, but of principal value on account of their association with the White House.’
