Harry S. Truman Library, Museum, and Tomb, Missouri

When Harry Truman came home to Independence, Missouri, after his presidency ended in 1953, he worked on establishing his presidential library and museum, located a few blocks north of downtown. It opened in 1957, and he moved his office there, and continued working, writing, meeting, and even answering the phone there, for the next 15 years. In the lobby is a large mural, "Independence and the Opening of the West" by Thomas Hart Benton, who painted it on site over a period of three years, completing it in 1961. Much of the building is occupied by displays about Harry Truman’s life and presidency, most of which have been updated since his time. Upstairs are ten meandering galleries covering his presidential years, filled with screens, text and artifacts. There is a recreation of his White House oval office (a feature for presidential library museums that has since been repeated by presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush). There are displays about the post-war boom in America, as well as the atomic blast that brought an end to the war, used by his command, and the beginnings of the Cold War. Downstairs the exhibits continue, covering his life and times. Throughout are quotes and thoughts by him, etched or painted onto the walls, and at the end, of course, a gift shop. The facility was heavily redesigned in 2001, using more glass around the inner courtyard. In 2007, his former office was opened up to public viewing with a $1.6 million renovation project. The office where Truman worked over the last 15 years of his life, in the very location inside his legacy museum and library, has been recreated as it appeared December 26, 1972, the day he died, at age 88. Outside the office door, inside the courtyard, is his tomb, where his wife Bess joined him ten years later.