Audio
The Noland Home---Parlor---Portraits and Panels--Audio Description
Transcript
Portraits and Panels, 2:35 minutes: On the wall to the right of the phone is a tall centered window under which a seating bench is available. On either side are framed photo-portraits, each three-and-a-half feet tall by two-and-a-half feet wide, of the young Harry Truman (left) and Bess Wallace (right). Truman is pictured in 1905 with short dark hair, seated, wearing a suit jacket, long-sleeved white shirt and tie, and round frameless spectacles. Elizabeth Virginia “Bess” Wallace, shown in 1901, is seated with her elbows resting on a table. She is wearing a white dress, gathered at the waist, and long-button-down white gloves; her gaze is forward, toward us, and dark hair atop her head is adorned with a wreath of small flowers. On the wall opposite the phone a quotation from Truman is applied to the wall. Text reads: “I met a little, blue-eyed golden-haired girl (Bess)—my first sweetheart … we went to Sunday school … graduated in the same class, and marched down life’s road together.” Just above this text is a small rectangular graphic: framed in gold, its inside perimeter consists of colored squares—white, red, yellow, green, and blue—around a smaller inside rectangle in off-white. This echoes the glass at the top of the window just to the right of the Truman quotation—the view looks out on what had been the Gates-Wallace Home. To the right of the window is a map panel. Text reads: “Window to the Future: Imagine being able to see into the future. Although he didn’t know it at the time, Harry Truman could see his future through this window. Following a nine-year courtship Harry Truman married Bess Wallace in 1919. They lived together at 219 North Delaware for the next 53 years. ‘[H]e would stay here all night if he had a date over there because it was a long trip to go out [to Grandview], and there probably wasn’t a night train at that time. And he could stay here very easily, which he did, sometimes two or three times a week.’ Ethel Noland, 1965.” Below the text is a simple line drawing illustrating the 16 mile curving train route from Grandview (at the bottom) to Kansas City and the straight 9-mile streetcar route east to Independence. Text reads: “The trip from Grandview to Independence was not easy. Before he owned a car, Truman would catch a train from Grandview to Kansas City and then hop on a streetcar to Independence.”
Description
An audio description of the Foyer and Parlor of the Noland Home.
These files are being provided via this page until we can upgrade and install a new audio description service in FY 2024.
The audio files make reference to reproduction telephones...this service is intended to temporarily replace that.
Date Created
05/16/2023
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