Oval office

The oval office is the name of the office which the president of the the United States occupies in the western wing of the White House. It draws its name from its form imposed by George Washington. The first president of the United States could thus look in the eyes each person present at the meetings.

Dimensions

the longest Axis: 10,9 Mr.
the shortest Axis: 8,8 Mr.
Height: 5,6 Mr.
Below the Oval office is the , Operating room from where the President follows the course of the problematic situations for the safety of the country.

History

The current oval office was arranged by the president William Howard Taft who settled there in 1909. Its predecessor Theodore Roosevelt had a rectangular office in the western wing ( the West Wing ) which it had made build. There was already an oval room in the White House: the blue part ( blue room ).

This preference for the oval parts dates from the president George Washington. In its house of Philadelphia, it had arranged two parts with arcs of circle. When it received, the President was thus in the center of the circle of the guests, and all were at equal distance from him. The circle became a symbol of Démocratie in the first times of the the United States.

The president Taft wanted that the oval office is the center of its government ( administration ). Moreover, by making of his office the center of the western wing, the President was more implied in the daily businesses of his presidency that his predecessors.

In 1933, the president Franklin Delano Roosevelt made rebuild the oval office at a excentré place. Indeed, the office of Taft did not have windows on outside because of its position in the center of the building. The new site allows more intimacy to the President who can thus pass in the residential part of the White House without passing in the offices and in front of the employees.

With the passing of years, the oval office became the symbol place of the capacity of the president of the United States. The citizens of this country developed an attachment with this place thanks to several images, among which the son of the president John Fitzgerald Kennedy playing feet of his/her father or Richard Nixon speaking on the telephone with the astronauts about the missions about NASA from its office. Moreover, the speeches of Ronald Reagan after the explosion of the shuttle Challenger and of George Walker Bush during the release of military operations in Iraq the March 19th 2003 were retransmis from the oval office.

See too

References

Several parts of the article are drawn from the free text of right of the documentation of the White House

External bond

Oval office Page on the official site of the White House

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