Resolute Desk
The Resolute desk
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| Designer | William Evenden |
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| Date | September 9, 1879 |
| Country | Chatham Dockyard, England |
| Materials | Timbers of the exploration ship HMS Resolute, Morocco leather |
| Style / tradition | Partners desk |
| Height | 2 ft 8 in (0.8 m) |
| Width | 6 ft (1.8 m) |
| Depth | 4 ft (1.2 m) |
The Resolute desk is a large, nineteenth-century partners' desk used by many presidents of the United States in the White House Oval Office as the Oval Office desk. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the English oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship Resolute. Franklin Roosevelt requested the addition of a door with the presidential seal to conceal his leg braces. Many presidents since Hayes have used the desk at various locations in the White House, but in 1961 it was First Lady Jackie Kennedy who had the idea, agreed to by her husband John F. Kennedy, to bring the Resolute desk into the Oval Office for the first time.
The desk was removed from the White House only once, after the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, when President Lyndon Johnson allowed it to go on a traveling exhibition with the Kennedy Presidential Library. After this it was on display in the Smithsonian Institution.
President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office in 1977, where Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have used it. George H. W. Bush used the C&O desk in the Oval Office, but kept the Resolute desk in the White House.
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