Rehabilitating the Texas White House: What Crews Found in 2024

Drive the LBJ Ranch auto tour route at Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and the Texas White House may look quiet. But from January to June 2024, the rehabilitation of the house and the nearby hangar made major progress — and the historic buildings kept revealing surprises.

The walls and large stone fireplace of the Texas White House living room, covered to protect them during the work (NPS photo / D. Smith).

The Texas White House

New discoveries

• Hidden wood ceilings. Several rooms on both floors turned out to have wood ceilings, long thought to be gypsum board. Some first-floor ceilings will have to come down so the second floor can be structurally reinforced.
• Hollow columns. The porch columns in front of President Johnson's office wing are hollow; hidden supports will be placed inside them to strengthen the porch roof.

Bringing back the 1960s

• Carpet. Lady Bird Johnson lived in the house at least part time until her death in 2007 and updated its looks and colors over the years. Museum staff and the project manager visited a carpet showroom in Austin and chose samples resembling original 1960s carpet samples kept in the park's archives.
• Roof shingles. The originals were flat, light-gray, three-tab shingles. Today's shingles are mostly dimensional architectural shingles, and three-tab colors are limited, so the team chose an available gray three-tab shingle as close to the original as possible — slightly darker.

Structural work for the long term

• Ductwork. Parts of the house predate air conditioning, and the Johnsons and earlier owners altered it many times. Installing ducts for the new heating and cooling system meant rerouting some to run alongside wooden joists that turned out to run east–west, not north–south as believed, and ordering narrower duct pieces for tighter spaces.
• Flat roofs. Some sections of roof are flat — including one over what was once a large open second-floor deck behind the house, used when the president's aunt and uncle Martin lived there. These areas are being given a slight slope, barely visible, to meet building codes and drain rainwater away from the house.

The north and east sides of the Texas White House in 1951, with the door to the second-floor deck and its wooden railing.

The Hangar

The Johnsons built the Hangar in 1959 to store aircraft and ranch supplies. During the Johnson presidency it hosted press conferences, and it later served as a visitor center.

• Walls on asphalt. When the Johnsons extended the original carport on the hangar's south side to add rooms, they built the additions and walls directly on asphalt. A concrete slab was added later, but the interior walls have no footings, so footings will be designed to stabilize them.
• A change of plan. The original septic tank ended up trapped beneath the added rooms. Rather than remove it, as first planned, the team will fill it in and leave it in place — the easiest and safest approach.
• Shoring and trusses. Shoring plans are nearly complete, after which structural strengthening will continue. Every truss weld must be stripped of paint, cleaned and inspected — a major effort — and about 42% are expected to need replacing.

A welder works on trusses near the Hangar ceiling (NPS photo / D. Smith).

Sources

• National Park Service, Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park: "Texas White House Rehabilitation Updates January - June 2024."