The Very Boring Original Purpose of the Oval Office

The Oval Office in the White House is arguably the single most important room in America. It’s the official workspace of the highest calling in our country, where deals and treaties have been brokered, historic meetings have take place and world-changing decisions have been made. It’s often seen in the background of photos that are immediately part of American history, the president of the time hunched over the Resolute desk, hard at work.

What you might not know is that the Oval Office, at least the room that we know, wasn’t always such an impactful area of the White House. In fact, it was technically not part of the White House at all. The modern White House layout is a far cry from the original blueprints. The West Wing itself wasn’t even the center of much of the president’s day-to-day activities until Theodore Roosevelt became president, and had the White House extensively renovated in 1902. 

Roosevelt, though still made a different room than the modern Oval Office his headquarters, the room now known as the Roosevelt Room. William Howard Taft worked out of the Oval Office, but it still wasn’t the one you’d see today.

So when did the Oval Office as we know it emerge? 

It came with a different Roosevelt: Franklin Delano. He had the West Wing expanded in 1934, and a new Oval Office built, modeled after the existing one but in a different location. A location, that until this very moment, had held an important, but completely apolitical purpose: drying laundry. 

If you were to stand in the middle of the Oval Office and fire up a time machine sending you back to days of old, you’d find yourself standing in a lawn full of wet presidential skivvies.