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Concept
Resolute desk
Summary
The Resolute desk, also known as the Hayes desk, is a nineteenth-century partners desk used by several presidents of the United States in the White House as the Oval Office desk, including the five most recent presidents. The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship . The desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford.
HMS Resolute was abandoned in the Arctic waterway Tariyunnuaq in 1854 while searching for Sir John Franklin and his lost expedition. It was found in 1855 floating in Davis Strait by George Henry, an American whaling ship. Resolute was 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 a competition was held to design and build a piece of furniture from its timbers that Queen Victoria could give to the American president. Morant, Boyd, & Blanford won this contest, and this desk was constructed shortly after. Two other furniture pieces were created from the timbers of the Resolute: the Grinnell desk, made for the widow of Henry Grinnell, who spent significant sums of money trying to find Sir John Franklin and his ships; and a table made for Queen Victoria's steam-powered yacht .
The Resolute desk was received at the White House on November 23, 1880, and shortly thereafter was moved to the second floor. It stayed 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. Jackie 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 President John F. Kennedy, and went on a traveling exhibition with artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library.
Official source
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