Diplomatic Reception Room

The Diplomatic Reception Room is one of three oval rooms in the residence of the White House, the official home of the President of the United States. It is located on the ground floor and is used as an entrance from the South Lawn, and a reception room for foreign ambassadors to present their credentials, a ceremony formerly conducted in the Blue Room. The room is the point of entry to the White House for a visiting head of state following the State Arrival Ceremony on the South Lawn. The room has four doors, which lead to the Map Room, the Center Hall, the China Room, and a vestibule that leads to the South Lawn.

For its first hundred years, the ground floor of the White House was used as a service and work area. Domestic staff used it for storage, kitchens, and maintenance. White House domestic staff gathered in this room to do mending and to polish silver. In 1837, the Van Buren administration installed a furnace here for the White House's first central heating system. Later steam boilers replaced the gravity system, remaining until the 1902 renovation by McKim, Mead, and White.

The 1902 renovation during the Theodore Roosevelt administration dramatically reconfigured the ground floor. Multiple layers of rotting floor boards were removed and new flooring installed. Several new rooms were framed and finished with a finished plaster coat. A gentlemen's and ladies' lounge and guest bathrooms were created. Charles Follen McKim admired James Hoban's groin vault ceilings in the center hall. The hall was refurbished and the center hall served to connect the new East and West wings. Though the ground floor oval room was much improved and now a part of the finished living space in the house, it remained primarily a passageway not a destination.

In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt had a chimney opened so he could conduct his "fireside chats." White House architect Lorenzo Winslow designed a new chimney breast and mantel that, though intended to appear traditional, subtly evokes Art Moderne in its ribbed curved sides.

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