The Roosevelt Room is a meeting room in the West Wing

West Wing

The West Wing is the building housing the official offices of the President of the United States. It is the part of the White House Complex in which the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room, the Situation Room, and the Roosevelt Room are located...

 of the White House

White House

The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...

, the official home and principal workplace of the President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

. Located almost in the center of the West Wing, and near the Oval Office

Oval Office

The Oval Office, located in the West Wing of the White House, is the official office of the President of the United States.The room features three large south-facing windows behind the president's desk, and a fireplace at the north end...

 the room is named for two related U.S. presidents, Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt

Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The two arguably contributed more than any other presidents to the design and construction of the West Wing.

Theodore Roosevelt hired architect Charles Follen McKim

Charles Follen McKim

Charles Follen McKim FAIA was an American Beaux-Arts architect of the late 19th century. Along with Stanford White, he provided the architectural expertise as a member of the partnership McKim, Mead, and White....

 to reorganize the layout and use of the White House. This included constructing the West Wing in 1902 and moving executive offices out of the central White House. The original structure, some of which is still extant in the present West Wing was originally intended to be temporary. With some modifications by William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft

William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...

 the West Wing remained largely unchanged until a fire on December 24, 1929 during the administration of Herbert Hoover

Herbert Hoover

Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...

. Because of the recent stock market crash, Hoover chose only to repair rather than expand. In 1933, early in the administration of Franklin Roosevelt, the president began a series of meetings with staff architect Eric Gugler to enlarge and modify the West Wing. Roosevelt moved Taft's Oval Office, centered on the south side of the wing, to its present location in the southeast corner adjacent to the Rose Garden

White House Rose Garden

The White House Rose Garden is a garden bordering the Oval Office and the West Wing of the White House. The garden is approximately 125 feet long and 60 feet wide...

. This made moving to and from the Executive Residence

Executive Residence

The Executive Residence is the central building of the White House Complex located between the East Wing and West Wing. This central building, first constructed 1792–1800, is home to the President of the United States and the First Family. The Executive Residence primarily occupies three floors:...

 to the Oval Office quicker, and allowed for more privacy, a concern in concealing FDR's paralysis

Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralytic illness

Franklin D. Roosevelt's paralytic illness began in 1921 at age 39, when Roosevelt got a fever after exercising heavily at a vacation in Canada. While his bout with illness was well known during his terms as President of the United States, the extent of his paralysis was kept from public view. After...

.

The present Roosevelt Room is located where Teddy Roosevelt's first West Wing office was. When FDR reconstructed the West Wing he used the present room for staff meetings, larger meetings with members of Congress. Franklin Roosevelt kept an aquarium and hung several mounted fish in the room, and the room became "the fish room." President Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

 continued the fish name and hung a large mounted sail fish on the wall. In 1969 President Nixon gave the room its present name, the Roosevelt Room, to honor Theodore Roosevelt who first built the West Wing, and FDR who expanded it.

The east wall of the room is a half circle, with a centered fireplace and doors on either side. Cast bronze bas-relief plaques with profile portraits of Theodore Roosevelt by James Earle Fraser and of FDR by John DeStefano

John DeStefano

John DeStefano, was an American sculptor, painter and businessman.Born in Avellino, Italy, he immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts with his family at the age of six...

 hung on the south wall until removal during a refurbishment during the second term of President George W. Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

. The room has no windows and is lit by a false skylight. A large conference table seating a maximum of 16 is located in the center. The room is painted a buff color with white trim. A triglyph

Triglyph

Triglyph is an architectural term for the vertically channeled tablets of the Doric frieze, so called because of the angular channels in them, two perfect and one divided, the two chamfered angles or hemiglyphs being reckoned as one. The square recessed spaces between the triglyphs on a Doric...

 molding, similar to that found in Independence Hall encircles the room. The furniture is mostly twentieth century reproductions of Chippendale

Thomas Chippendale

Thomas Chippendale was a London cabinet-maker and furniture designer in the mid-Georgian, English Rococo, and Neoclassical styles. In 1754 he published a book of his designs, titled The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker's Director...

 and Queen Anne Style

Queen Anne Style architecture

The Queen Anne Style in Britain means either the English Baroque architectural style roughly of the reign of Queen Anne , or a revived form that was popular in the last quarter of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th century...

 furniture.

Traditionally paintings of both presidents Roosevelt have hung in the room. Even before President Nixon's formal naming of the Roosevelt Room a tradition existed of Democratic administrations hanging Alfred Jonniaux

Alfred Jonniaux

Alfred Jonniaux was a Belgian painter who became American in 1946.He was born in Brussels, Belgium where he studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He painted the portraits of many officials and European royal family members. During the war, he fled to The United States during the Nazi...

's portrait of FDR over the mantel with Teddy Roosevelt's equestrian portrait by Tade Styka titled "Rough Rider" hung on the south wall. Republican administrations would, in turn, hang Teddy Roosevelt's painting above the mantel and move FDR's portrait to the south wall. Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

decided to keep the landscape formatted Teddy Roosevelt portrait above the mantel and FDR's portrait on the south wall.
The Roosevelt Room continues to be used for staff meetings, and is increasingly used to announce the appointment or nomination of new staff members. The room is also used as a preparation room by large delegations meeting with the president before entering the Oval Office.

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.
• Garrett, Wendell. Our Changing White House. Northeastern University Press: 1995. ISBN 1-55553-222-5.
• Kloss. William, Doreen Bolger, David Park Curry, et al. Art in the White House, A Nation's Pride, White House Historical Association and Harry Abrams: 1992. ISBN 0-8109-3965-7.
• Monkman, Betty C. The White House: The Historic Furnishing & First Families. Abbeville Press: 2000. ISBN 0-7892-0624-2.
• Seale, William. The President's House. White House Historical Association and the National Geographic Society: 1986. ISBN 0-912308-28-1.
• Seale, William, The White House: The History of an American Idea. White House Historical Association: 1992, 2001. ISBN 0-912308-85-0.
• The White House: An Historic Guide. White House Historical Association and the National Geographic Society: 2001. ISBN 0-912308-79-6.

External links

• the online White House museum page