Washington Winter Show 2012

46 In 1959 Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in cooperation with Michael Greer, president of the American Association of Interior Designers, established an acquisition program for the White House, seeking gifts of historic furnishings of the federal period, beginning with the Diplomatic Reception Room; antique dealers and interior designers donated generously. The historic décor of theDiplomatic ReceptionRoomwas capped off by the installation of an 1834 striking of Frenchman Jean Zuber’s wallpaper mural Scenic America . Using donated funds, Mrs. Kennedy purchased the historic wallpaper, which had been rescued from a doomed house in one of Baltimore’s older neighborhoods. THE WEST WING: THE OVAL OFFICE The day President William Howard Taft (1909–13) moved into the White House, March 4, 1909, the United States Congress appropriated funds sufficient to double in size Theodore Roosevelt’s The First Oval Office, ca. 1909 Postcard Credit: White House Historical Association Architectural elements were moved to the present Oval Office in 1934. Exterior View of Oval Office, 1934 Credit: Abbie Rowe, NPS, White House The oval shape of the roof crowns the Oval Office in its new location. Temporary Executive Office Building. 5 The “West Wing”—as we know it today—had been built in 1902 as a means of relocating the executive staff outside the White House proper. In its arrangement, theTemporaryExecutiveOffice placed the president’s secretary in the principal space, with the “president’s room” and “cabinet room” adjacent. Roosevelt had met very few lawmakers or diplomats in the new buildings: these dignitaries considered the president’s room “unofficial.” Instead, important visitors were ushered into the White House proper to an upstairs study to meet Roosevelt. Taft dropped the word “temporary” fromthe name; this was to be a permanent presidential center for himself as well as his staff, separate and apart from the residence. To ease symbolic objections, he approved the addition of a prominent, oval-shaped presidential office, echoing the Blue Room, the most identifiable interior in the historic White House. Taft’s became the first permanent presidential office outside the walls of the White House, but the “Oval Office” he built would not gain its world renown for half a century. President Taft’s oval office was demolished in 1934; its architectural elements were re-used in part in the present Oval Office built by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he enlarged the West Wing later that year. The new office was located on the southeast corner of the building, overlooking the Rose Garden. A new porch provided a shady retreat. FDR gave press conferences in the office from time to time, although reporters complained of being cramped. In 1949, President Truman signed the charter for the National Trust for Historic Preservation there, speaking above the noise of bulldozers grinding away a century and a half of material history nearby, in the process of demolishing the White House interior. President and Mrs. Kennedy’s plans for redecorating were set aside when President Johnson took office in 1963. LBJ’s was a working office that got hard use. Johnson filled the empty bookcases with volumes borrowed from the Library of Congress and installed two ticker-tape machines but did not change the décor. This page is sponsored by Kirk Brady, Dede Caughman, Marianne Horan and Sissy Zimmerman