Truman occasionally came here to escape from the pressures of being presiding judge. He checked in once in 1933, for example, to escape county workers at a time when he was having to lay some off. "I have to go and hide," he wrote Bess. "I am now on the seventh floor of the Pickwick Hotel. The manager gave me a room without registering so no job holder who wants to stay on can see or phone me." (Letter of April 28, 1933.) Truman wrote a series of diary-like memorandums while he was secluded in his hotel room. He agonized in them about trying to be honest while working within the corrupt Jackson County political machine. "Am I just a crook to compromise in order to get the job done? You judge it, I can't." (Handwritten manuscript, "Politics, Life, etc.," ca. 1931.)
The Pickwick Hotel is located at 10th and McGee Streets.