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WASHINGTON — This summer, the White House will feature two Oval Offices as a two-year renovation project of the West Wing goes into effect. The project, however, is not the first renovation performed on the historical house located on Pennsylvania Ave.
President Barack Obama will be moving into the nearly identical replica of the current Oval Office in August, which will be at the south end of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. The $376 million project for the West Wing was started in Sept. 2010, but was put on holding pending the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
The Oval Office was added to the White House in 1909. President William Howard Taft intended to have his office in the center of the West Wing as a way to be at the center of his administration. The Oval Office allowed him to be involved in the daily operations associated with the office of president.
A fire in the Oval Office in Dec. 1929, during President Herbert Hoover's administration, forced a substantial rebuild of the now-iconic room. Hoover upgraded the room by including the first air conditioning system.
The Oval Office and the White House have had several renovations performed over the years, with one of the most substantial renovation projects taking place in 1948 during President Harry S. Truman's administration. Recently released photographs by the National Archive show how extensive the project was.
When Truman took over as president, the White House was nearly 150 years old and was showing its age. The New York Times described the "unsafe" conditions of the building, saying: "The ceiling of the East Room, elaborately done in the frescoes of fruits and reclining women and weighing seventy pounds to the square foot, was found to be sagging six inches on Oct. 26, and now is being held in place by scaffolding and supports.
"But it took the $50,000 survey authorized by Congress to disclose the fact that the marble grand staircase is in imminent danger," The Times report continues. "Supporting bricks, bought second hand in 1880, are disintegrating."
The idea of destroying the White House was considered, but the historical importance of the building saved its destruction.
"It perhaps would be more economical from a purely financial standpoint to raze the building and to rebuild completely," Truman testified before Congress in Feb. 1949. "In doing so, however, there would be destroyed a building of tremendous historical significance in the growth of the nation."
The decision was made that the White House would have to be gutted, which included the interior and the walls. As photographs of the process show, the only thing that remained were the outside of the structure, which was reinforced by newly-placed concrete columns.
