Resolute desk
Designer | William Evenden (probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford) Kneehole panel designed by Lorenzo Winslow built by Rudolph Bauss |
---|---|
Date | 1880 |
Materials | Oak timbers of HMS Resolute |
Style / tradition | Partners desk |
Height | 32.5 in (83 cm) |
Width | 72 in (180 cm) |
Depth | 48 in (120 cm) |
The Resolute desk, also known as the Hayes desk, is a nineteenth-century
HMS Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic while searching for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition. The ship was found in 1855 by George Henry, an American whaling ship, repaired, and returned to the United Kingdom as a gesture of goodwill from the United States. The ship was decommissioned in 1879, broken up, and had three desks constructed from its timbers. Queen Victoria sent one of these desks to American President Rutherford B. Hayes. The Resolute desk was received at the White House on November 23, 1880, and was used in the President's Office and President's Study until the White House Reconstruction from 1948 to 1952. After the reconstruction, it was placed in the Broadcast Room where Dwight D. Eisenhower used it during radio and television broadcasts. Jacqueline Kennedy rediscovered the desk and had it brought to the Oval Office in 1961. The desk was removed from the White House after the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, and went on a traveling exhibition with artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library. President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the White House in 1977, where it has remained since.
Many replicas have been made of the Resolute desk. The first was commissioned in 1978 for a permanent display at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in
Design and markings
H.M.S. 'Resolute', forming part of the expedition sent in search of Sir John Franklin in 1852, was abandoned in Latitude 74º 41' N. Longitude 101º 22' W. on 15th May 1854. She was discovered and extricated in September 1855, in Latitude 67º N. by Captain Buddington of the United States Whaler 'George Henry'. The ship was purchased, fitted out and sent to England, as a gift to Her Majesty Queen Victoria by the President and People of the United States, as a token of goodwill & friendship. This table was made from her timbers when she was broken up, and is presented by the Queen of Great Britain & Ireland, to the President of the United States, as a memorial of the courtesy and loving kindness which dictated the offer of the gift of the 'Resolute'.
– brass plaque affixed to the desk[1]
The Resolute desk is built from
A plaque, mounted on the front center drawer, explains the history of the Resolute and the meaning behind the desk.[4] This plaque was originally on the back of the desk but from Ronald Reagan's presidency onwards it has been photographed as being on the front.[9] The underside of all the exterior drawer fronts are stamped "MORANT BOYD & BLANFORD / 91 NEW BOND STREET" and the lock plates are stamped "BY ROYAL / LETTERS PATENT / FOUR LEVERS / SAFETY LOCK / COMYN CHINC & Co."[10]
Modifications
Two significant modifications have been made to the Resolute desk since it was delivered to the White House. A panel was installed in the kneehole of the desk in 1945 and a plinth, or base, was added to raise the height of the desk in 1961.[11]
The panel was designed by White House architect
In 1961, during the
History
HMS Resolute
In May 1845 Sir John Franklin, a British explorer, launched an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. Using two of the Royal Navy's best ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, stocked with enough provisions to last three years, he charted a course through Baffin Bay, located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland. The expedition and all 129 crew members vanished.[15]
The fate of the ship was frequently brought up in British press and grew into a
When the ice thawed in the spring, the unmanned Resolute began drifting south, traveling more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) and roughly 7 degrees latitude, where it was spotted in September 1855 in
This all happened during an especially tense time in United Kingdom–United States relations. Then-President Franklin Pierce was prepared to go to war with Britain for what would be a third time.[17] In his third annual message, in 1855, Pierce discussed disputes over fishing rights and the border between British Columbia and Washington Territory as well as Britain's territorial claims in South America, which the United States claimed violated the Clayton–Bulwer Treaty.[18] Regarding the disagreement about Britain's foothold in South America, Britain's then First Lord of the Admiralty stated that "We are fast drifting into war with the United States."[19]
Wealthy American philanthropist Henry Grinnell, who had financed an earlier expedition to find Franklin's lost ships to no avail, suggested to the US government that the Resolute should be refit and sent back to England as a token of goodwill. As a way to help calm tensions between the two countries, a bill was introduced to Congress on June 24, 1856, to authorize the purchase and restoration of the Resolute.[4][17] The United States Government bought the ship from Buddington for $40,000 (equivalent to $1,310,000 in 2023) with plans to return it to the United Kingdom as a gift to Queen Victoria.[15][17]
On September 12, 1856, the Resolute was towed to the
The Resolute continued serving in the Royal Navy for twenty-three years as a supply vessel, but never again left British waters.
Design and construction
On June 11, 1879, the
Morant, Boyd, & Blanford had sent in multiple design drawings for the competition late in 1879 for various furniture pieces that could be constructed, including a large combination bookcase and chimneypiece. This design was created to symbolize the circumstances surrounding the gift of the Resolute back to England. A bust of
Queen Victoria ordered that three desks be made from the timbers of Resolute. The one that is now known as the Resolute desk was announced as "recently manufactured" on November 18, 1880.
Arrival in America
On August 26, 1880, Victor Drummond, the British ambassador to Washington, wrote a letter to
Early use as a presidential desk
After receiving the desk, President Hayes placed it in the Green Room, one of the three state parlors on the first floor of the White House. It was on view here as an exhibition for tourists and visitors until Hayes ordered the desk be taken upstairs to his office on the second floor.[38] At this time, the second floor of the White House acted both as the first family's living quarters and as the President's Office.[39] What are now the Lincoln Bedroom, Lincoln Sitting Room, and Treaty Room were the president's main working spaces with the Yellow Oval Room used as the president's library or a family parlor.[39][40] After the desk was moved to these offices by Hayes in 1880, it traveled from room to room, based on presidents' needs, for the next twenty-two years. Grover Cleveland used it in his office and library in what is now the Yellow Oval Room for both of his non-consecutive terms,[41][42] William McKinley used the desk often in the Presidential Office and had a bouquet of flowers placed upon it every day,[43] and Theodore Roosevelt used it in the President's Room, today's Lincoln Bedroom.[44]
The desk stayed in the President's Office until the office was moved to the newly built West Wing in 1902, during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency.[1] After the McKim, Mead, & White renovations to the White House, Edith Roosevelt moved the Resolute desk to the former cabinet room, now the Treaty Room, to create a Den, or President's Study, for her husband.[40][45] Woodrow Wilson also used the Resolute desk in this room. Wilson and his wife called the center drawer on one side of the desk "The Drawer" as it was where important communications and papers were placed if something happened between the closing time the day before and that morning.[46]
Franklin D. Roosevelt and the kneehole panel
Franklin D. Roosevelt turned the Yellow Oval Room into his Oval Study, where both he and Harry S. Truman used the Resolute desk.[47] Roosevelt kept the desk covered in personal mementos and, when entertaining visitors, would mix alcoholic drinks atop the desk.[48]
While the desk was in use in the Oval Study, President Roosevelt requested that a panel be installed in the rear kneehole, but it was not installed until 1945 after Roosevelt had died.[1] The earliest documented reasoning for the addition of this panel comes from a 1962 phone call readout with Rudolph Bauss, the National Parks Service employee who carved and constructed the panel. while referring to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Bauss stated, “The President requested that a panel be placed in the desk for the following reasons: 1.) to hide the iron braces on his legs; 2.) to conceal a safe which the President wished to place just behind the panel.”[11] Roosevelt wore leg braces and was in a wheelchair most of the time due to polio.[5][4]
This statement by Bauss has become the official story for this panel and has been repeated in many official channels and well researched articles and books.[1][4][5][11] Sarah Fling, a historian with the White House Historical Association disagrees with this narrative in her article, "A Resolute Myth: Debunking the Resolute Desk Panel," noting that Roosevelt used this desk in a non-public facing room, he did not have panels installed in other public desks he used, and that the designs by Lorenzo Winslow for the panel are dated June 13, 1945, which is two months after Roosevelt's sudden death. Fling believes Bauss' memory was inaccurate and there is no evidence the decision to add the panel was tied to Roosevelt's disability.[11]
White House reconstruction
The White House saw a major reconstruction under Harry S. Truman between 1948 and 1952 where the entire interior of the building was rebuilt.[6][1] The president moved his family to Blair House during this reconstruction. The move out began on November 9, when the president left for a trip to Key West, with staff being given only two weeks to completely empty the building of furnishings. Blair House was already furnished but some White House elements were installed in the next door Lee House which was connected to Blair house during this move. The rest of the items had to be stored. The Library of Congress stored some books, the National Gallery of Art housed some of the art, and the Smithsonian Institution stored a few additional pieces. Most objects though were shipped up to New York to be stored in the climate controlled vaults owned by B. Altman and Company. Charles T. Haight, who ran the interior design department at Altman, charged the government only the at-cost rate for storage, $85 a month (equivalent to $4,819 in 2023).[49]
Charles T. Haight was awarded for storing the furnishings at such a low cost by being invited to do the interior design for the newly constructed White House rooms.[49][50] On June 19, 1951, Haight presented a color drawing of his design for the old kitchen, later known as the Broadcast Room and now the Office of the Curator, to Congress' Commission on Renovation of the Executive Mansion. These plans included heavy traverse draperies in dull gold, a chenille rug, a pine table and cabinet removed from the White House after the 1814 Burning of Washington, black leather sofas and chairs, small tables, two new end tables, two new coffee tables and "The large desk which was originally in the President's Study" per minutes from a meeting of the Commission.[51] Here, in the Broadcast Room, the Resolute desk was used during both radio and television broadcasts by Dwight D. Eisenhower.[6][1]
Kennedy and Johnson years
In 1961 John F. Kennedy was the first president to use the desk in the Oval Office.
When Jacqueline Kennedy discovered the desk, it was covered and obscured by green
President Kennedy had a taping system installed in the Oval Office which was designed and installed by Robert Bouck, a Secret Service agent, in July 1962.[56] A microphone was located in the kneehole of the Resolute desk, and a button was installed under the desk for Kennedy to turn it on and off at will. A second microphone was disguised on the coffee table in the same room.[57] Kennedy was the first president to make extensive use of recording as a means to document meetings, selectively recording over 238 hours of conversation between recording systems in both the Oval Office and Cabinet Room. This system was unknown to most of Kennedy's top aides until it was revealed during the Watergate hearings in 1973.[56]
After Kennedy's
In an 1978
Ketchum describes that when the desk returned from this world tour it was considerably damaged "mainly because of the way the exhibit was handled and the shipping problems which they obviously encountered."
Oval Office desk
Jimmy Carter returned the Resolute desk to the Oval Office in 1977.[1] On the afternoon of his January 20 inauguration, Carter made his first visit as president to the Oval Office. He later said he "...sat down at the President's desk and looked it over. It was a surprise to see that it was not the same one which had been photographed when John Kennedy was there, with his little son peeping out from the door underneath. My first decision: to replace this desk with the one I remembered."[66] The next morning over breakfast he chose the Resolute desk from a set of images of desk options.[67] The Resolute desk has been used by every president since in this room except for George H. W. Bush who used it for five months in the Oval Office before moving it to his Residence Office in the Treaty Room of the White House.[16] Bush used the C&O desk in the Oval Office instead.[1] Bill Clinton returned the Resolute desk to the Oval Office on his first day as president on January 20, 1993.[68]
In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited President Barack Obama and gave him the original framed commissioning papers for HMS Resolute and an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet.[69] Gannet began its service the same year that Resolute was broken up and the pen holder was made in the same Joiners Shop as the Resolute desk.[24]
Obama also found himself in a minor controversy in conservative media when in 2013 photographs were released showing him with his foot resting on the Resolute desk.[70] Multiple other presidents have also been photographed with their feet up on the desk.[71]
A failed attempt to switch out the Resolute desk with the Hoover desk was made during the transition to Joe Biden's presidency. Valerie Biden Owens, the sister of President Joe Biden and a member of the team tasked with redecorating the Oval Office for Biden's tenure, wrote in her memoir, "We tried to get FDR's Oval Office desk — I wanted everything Trump had touched out of there — but to this day, the desk resides at FDR's family home in Hyde Park. ... Thus, the desk Trump had sat behind remained."[72][73]
A button to call aides was noted as being on the Resolute desk since at least the George W. Bush presidency.[74] This button sits in an approximately 9 in (23 cm) long by 3 in (7.6 cm) wide wooden box marked with a golden presidential seal.[75] Donald Trump stated to one reporter that "everyone thinks it is [the nuclear button]".[76]
Timeline
Below is a table with the location of the desk from 1880, when it arrived in America, to the present day. Each tenant of the desk is noted as well.
Other items made from HMS Resolute
External image | |
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Image of a side table built from the timbers of HMS Resolute. Queen Victoria kept this table on HMY Victoria and Albert and it is now part of the British Royal Collection. |
Queen Victoria had a total of three tables built from the timbers of HMS Resolute, of which the desk given to President Hayes was one.[23] According to letters listed in Volume 40 of the Parliamentary Papers, two "memorial tables" made out of timbers from the Resolute were announced as "recently manufactured" by Robert Hall to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury on November 18, 1880. Hall said that both tables were to be presented by the Queen, with one going to the president of the United States and the other given to the widow of Henry Grinnell. Four days later, on November 22, a second letter described how the Queen has "expressed a desire to have a table manufactured out of the same timbers" and that it was subsequently made by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford for a cost of 62 pounds (equivalent to £6,600 in 2021).[8]
The desk given to Henry Grinnell's widow, in recognition of the large sums of money her husband spent trying to find Sir John Franklin and his ships, is now known as the Grinnell desk.
Queen Victoria's table was made for use on her steam-powered yacht,
While Parliamentary papers list expenditures for only three tables,[8] Captain Michael Taylor, a docent at the New Bedford Whaling Museum who focuses his studies on the Grinnell desk, stated in a lecture that "it is believed a fourth may also have been made".[23] Martin W. Sandler notes in his book, Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship that Lady Jane Franklin, the widow of Sir John Franklin, may have also received a desk.[14]
The National Maritime Museum, one of the four-member intuitions of Royal Museums Greenwich, holds a few other objects created from the timbers of the Resolute. These include three picture frames,[81][82][83] a paper knife,[84] and a box bearing a brass plaque.[85] The museum also has a block of wood from the Resolute[86] and the ship's figurehead, which is in the shape of a polar bear.[87] Other parts of the ship are held by various museums, including the ship's clock at the Vancouver Maritime Museum and the ship's spyglass and sextant at the New London County Historical Society. The Resolute's bell was given to President Lyndon Johnson by UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1965.[14]
Replicas
The first mention of creating a replica of the Resolute desk comes from a memo sent from Jacqueline Kennedy on April 2, 1963, only two years into John F. Kennedy's presidency.[88] J. B. West, the White House Chief Usher at the time, included the text from this memo in his memoir Upstairs at the White House; my life with the First Ladies. Jacqueline Kennedy wrote the following to him:
Would Mr. Arata [the White House upholsterer] know of any wonderful wood carver? The absured [sic] reason I ask this is that I am thinking very far ahead: In his Library, the President (like President Truman) wishes to have a replica of his office—heaven knows, he picked the worst possible desk to duplicate.
I thought if there was a wood carver around, perhaps he could do such a thing by stucco, or wax impressions—would you find this out, perhaps from Smithsonian? You could tell them that some museum wants a duplicate of the desk, the best way this could be done, and let me know when you do.[88]
This first attempt at creating a replica fell to the National Park Service but the techniques they chose to use turned out to be too expensive. This attempt to create a replica was abandoned.[88]
The first successful replica of the Resolute desk was commissioned in 1978 for a permanent display at the
Six
Other museums and libraries also display replica Resolute desks. These include the
Other tourist attractions across the United States exhibit replica Resolute desks. These include Madame Tussauds museums in Washington, D.C., Hollywood, Las Vegas, and New York.[103] The Rogue Valley International–Medford Airport has an Oval Office meeting facility featuring a smaller replica of the Resolute desk,[104] and Conservative Grounds, a Donald Trump-themed coffee shop in Largo, Florida, has a replica Oval Office and Resolute desk in the back of the store.[105]
Several private houses and replica Oval Offices display copies of the Resolute desk, including the Ron Wade House in Longview, Texas[103] a 10,000-square-foot home in Kirtland Hills, Ohio,[106] and Norton Manor, the Potomac, Maryland home of Frank Islam.[107]
There are multiple permanent Oval Office sets in Hollywood, all with a replica Resolute desk. The Castle Rock set was built in 1995 for The American President and the films Nixon (1995) and Independence Day (1996) used it. The set built for the 1993 film Dave subsequently hosted over 25 films, including The Pelican Brief (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and Absolute Power (1997).[108] The replica Resolute desk from The West Wing is in the Warner Bros. Prop House where it can be seen on studio tours.[109] A replica of the desk was used in the 2007 film National Treasure: Book of Secrets, in which a secret compartment in the desk contained pieces of a clue to the location of treasure.[79]
Jim Warlick, the owner of American Presidential Experience, owns five Oval Office replicas, each with its own Resolute desk. The most recent of his replica rooms cost $60,000 to build. These replicas are rented out for approximately $30,000 a week and have been used for book cover images, the television show Little People, Big World, the San Diego County Fair, television ads, and other media. The replicas are stored across the country including in Los Angeles, in Virginia, and near Atlanta.[110]
A replica of the desk was on display during the 58th Venice Biennale as a part of Kenneth Goldsmith's exhibition HILLARY: The Hillary Clinton Emails. Hillary Clinton sat at the replica for nearly an hour, leafing through over 60,000 of her emails that were printed out.[111]
The commercial sale of presidential furniture reproductions is a small but growing business. Companies such as New York First Co. and Victorian Replicas build or distribute replicas of the Resolute desk for commercial buyers. In a 2009 article in Woodshop News, David Newton from Victorian Replicas said that he had sold more than fifty replica Resolute desks. According to him, "Some people use them in their homes, and a large number of people who are lawyers like to have them."[112] Replicas were also on sale in 2015 through SkyMall for $5,499,[113] through the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library's online store for $6,999.99,[114] and in 2020, a full-scale replica of the Oval Office was put up for auction as part of Bonhams American Presidential Experience Auction for $40,000–$60,000.[115]
See also
References
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Works cited
- Monkman, Betty C. (2000). The White House: Its Historic Furnishings and First Families. New York: ISBN 0-7892-0624-2.
- Sandler, Martin W. (2006). Resolute: The Epic Search for the Northwest Passage and John Franklin, and the Discovery of the Queen's Ghost Ship. ISBN 978-1-4027-4085-5.
- Seale, William (1986). The President's House. Washington, D.C.: ISBN 0-912308-28-1.
- West, J. B; Kotz, Mary Lynn (1973). Upstairs at the White House; my life with the First Ladies. New York: ISBN 9780698105461.
Further reading
- Abbott, James A., and Elaine M. Rice. Designing Camelot: The Kennedy White House Restoration. Van Nostrand Reinhold: 1998. ISBN 0-442-02532-7.
- Matthews, Elizabeth. HMS Resolute. Auxilium ab Alto Press: 2007. ISBN 978-0-7552-0396-3.
- Owen, Roderic. The Fate of Franklin. Hutchinson: 1978. ISBN 0-09-131190-X.
- Seale, William. The White House: The History of an American Idea. White House Historical Association: 1992, 2001. ISBN 0-912308-85-0.
- Wolff, Perry. A tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy. Doubleday: 1962.OCLC 6800644
External links
- Media related to the Resolute desk at Wikimedia Commons