A $253,000 government contract has been awarded for a lighting project at the White House’s two-lane bowling alley, as President Donald Trump pushes ahead with a broader makeover of the White House and its surrounding grounds.
Federal procurement records show that the contract, funded by the Executive Office of the President, was given to Washington-based construction management firm Charles Mann Enterprises for work on the bowling alley located in the basement of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Trump has not publicly expressed an interest in bowling, and a White House spokesman said the president was not involved in the project.
The spokesman said the work would involve routine maintenance, including repairs to broken lights. He added that the bowling alley had welcomed nearly 10,000 guests over the past year.
The project comes amid Trump’s wider efforts to renovate and improve areas around the White House, with other projects involving hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer spending. These include plans concerning the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the Rose Garden and a major White House ballroom.
Charles Mann Enterprises did not respond to requests for comment about the contract.
The company was founded by Charles Mann, a former Washington Redskins player and three-time Super Bowl champion. It has secured at least $3 million in federal contracts in recent years, with previous work including repairs to a roof and an air-conditioning system.
Federal records also show that the company received another $878,000 contract for a “studio project” in the same basement where the bowling alley is located. Procurement records did not provide further details about the work.
The bowling alley itself has a long history connected to the White House. Two lanes were installed in the White House basement in 1947, during the sport’s surge in popularity, after a group of Missourians paid for the project as a 63rd birthday gift for then-President Harry S. Truman.
The unusual gift reportedly surprised White House staff because Truman had not bowled since his teenage years.
In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower relocated the bowling alley to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where it remains.
A proposal to rebuild the ageing lanes emerged in 2014 during Barack Obama’s presidency but was abandoned after Republicans criticised the use of public money for what they described as an exclusive facility.
Trump has previously carried out work on another White House bowling facility. In 2019, he renovated a separate single-lane alley beneath the White House that had been constructed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1973.
Nixon, an enthusiastic bowler, had the one-lane facility built during his presidency.
The latest project is therefore part of a much longer history of presidential changes to bowling facilities in and around the White House, although the current administration has described the latest work as routine upkeep and repairs.
