Was There a Squash Court at the White House?

Squash Blog Watch
By Alex Beam
From Vanity Fair

The question arises: Was there a squash court in the White House?

We all know there is a swimming pool, where President Kennedy famously disported himself with female staffers nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle. There is also a tennis court, and a little-used bowling alley. But squash just seems all wrong for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, what with the occupants’ man-of-the-people pretensions.

But.

I was emailing my longtime pal and fellow squashomane Henry “Sam” Chauncey, Jr., the former secretary of Yale University, on the subject of squash at the Federal Reserve. (There are squash courts at the Washington and Boston Federal Reserve buildings, and I suspect there are more of them elsewhere around the country—this is sure to be the subject of a forthcoming post.) Anent the Fed, Sam laid this bombshell on me:

“A story: I knew William McChesney Martin when he was Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He told me that when Truman asked him to be Chairman, he declined, saying that squash was essential in his life and he played every day at 5 PM and didn’t think he could if he were Chairman. Truman said fine; no problem. But Bill said: “Mr. President: what if you call me at 5 PM for an emergency?” Truman responded: “I won’t”.

And he did not, until one of his last days in office when, as Bill was heading out for his game, a call came from the White House saying Bill was urgently needed. So he told his secretary to cancel his game and went to the White House and found Truman had invited Hashim Khan, then the greatest player in the world, to play with Martin at the White House court.” (Hashim Khan was one of the legendary Pakistanis whom I mentioned in an earlier post.)

What a story, eh? But for it to be true, there had to be a squash court in the White House. And that wasn’t possible, I told Sam. He replied: “No, there was a White House court when Truman was there. It was taken out when the swimming pool was removed for the old press room.”

I dunno … it just didn’t sound right to me. So I got in touch with the Office of the Curator at the White House, and received this helpful missive from Ms. Hayley Bower:

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