page_title: East Room
section_title: Other important East Room events
hierarchical_section_title: East Room / Notable events in the East Room / Other important East Room events
caption_attribution_description: English: The swearing in of President Gerald Ford by Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. Français&#160;: Gerald Ford prêtant serment comme Président des Etats-Unis devant Warren Burger, le président de la Cour Suprême, le 9 août 1974.
context_page_description: The East Room is an event and reception room in the White House, the home of the President of the United States. The East Room is the largest room in the Executive Mansion; it is used for dances, receptions, press conferences, ceremonies, concerts, and banquets. The East Room was one of the last rooms to be finished and decorated, and it has undergone substantial redecoration over the past two centuries. Since 1964, the Committee for the Preservation of the White House has, by executive order, advised the President of the United States and First Lady of the United States on the decor, preservation, and conservation of the East Room and other public rooms at the White House.
context_section_description: East Room has served as the site of many important ceremonies, legislation and treaty signings, and other events. Some of these are:
  1860 – 15th President James Buchanan received the first diplomatic mission from Japan in the East Room on May 18.
  1861 – The funeral of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, the first Union Army soldier to die in the American Civil War, was held in the East Room on May 23. Ellsworth, commander of the 11th New York Infantry ("Fire Zouaves"), had become a close friend of Lincoln's, who wept when he learned of Ellsworth's death.
  1890 – The funerals of Mrs. Delinda Catlin Tracy, 57 and Miss Mary Farrington Tracy, 35, were held in the East Room on February 3. They were the wife and daughter of Secretary of the Navy Benjamin F. Tracy, and died in a fire at their home two blocks from the White House on February 3. Tracy himself would have died of smoke inhalation trying to rescue them had not President Benjamin Harrison rushed to the scene and revived him.
  1929 – President Calvin Coolidge signed the Kellogg–Briand Pact in the East Room on January 17. President Herbert Hoover then met with representatives of the governments that ratified the Kellogg-Briand Pact in the East Room on July 24.
  1936 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt presided over a state funeral in the East Room for his long-time advisor Louis Howe on April 21.
  1943 – The agreement establishing the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration was signed in the East Room by representatives from 44 nations on November 9.
  1957 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower took the presidential oath of office in the East Room on January 20. The Constitution of the United States requires the oath to be administered at noon on January 20. But since this was a Sunday, Eisenhower took the oath in private at the required time. A public inauguration was held the following day.
  1964 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the East Room on July 2. The ceremony was nationally televised, and more than 100 Senators and civil rights leaders attended the event.
  1973 – President Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, leader of the Soviet Union, signed the Scientific and Technical Cooperation Agreement in the Field of Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in the East Room on June 21.
  1974 – President Nixon gave a farewell address to the White House staff in the East Room at 9:00 a.m. on August 9. His resignation as President of the United States became effective at 11:35 a.m. when it was received by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Vice President Gerald Ford took the presidential oath of office in the East Room at 12:03 p.m. the same day.
  1976 – President Ford signed the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty in the East Room on May 28 while, simultaneously, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev signed the treaty in Moscow.
  1978 – President Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords in the East Room on September 17 at 11:00 p.m.
  1987 – President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) in the East Room on December 8.
  1990 – President George H. W. Bush and Soviet President Gorbachev signed five treaties in the East Room on June 2: the 1990 Chemical Weapons Accord, the USSR–USA Maritime Boundary Agreement, new protocols governing the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, and the Agreement on Trade Relations Betwseen the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (which provided for reciprocal Most Favored Nation status for the Soviet Union, improved market access in the Soviet Union for U.S. goods and services, freer operation of U.S. commercial representations in the USSR, and stronger intellectual property rights protection).
  2011 – President Barack Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden in the East Room on May 2.
caption: Gerald Ford is sworn in as 38th President of the United States in the East Room on August 8, 1974.
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