page_title: Resolute desk
section_title: Presidential desk
hierarchical_section_title: Resolute desk / History / Presidential desk
caption_attribution_description: English: President Donald Trump, joined by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins, left, and First Daughter Ivanka Trump, talks with NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer onboard the International Space Station Monday, April 24, 2017 from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. The President congratulated Whitson for breaking the record for cumulative time spent in space by a U.S. astronaut. The President and First Daughter also discussed with the three astronauts what it is like to live and work on the orbiting outpost as well as the importance of STEM.
context_page_description: The Resolute desk is a nineteenth-century partners' desk used by several 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 HMS 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.
  The desk was removed from the White House after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when President Lyndon Johnson allowed it to go on a traveling exhibition with other artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library. It was then put on display in the Smithsonian Institution.
  President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office in 1977, where it has remained with every president since, except George H. W. Bush, who used the C&O desk in the Oval Office.
context_section_description: President John F. Kennedy first placed the Resolute desk in the Oval Office in 1961. The desk left the White House from 1963 until President Carter brought it back to the Oval Office. Since then, presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have used it in the Oval Office. Some presidents, such as George H. W. Bush, have used the desk in their private study rather than in the Oval Office.
  When president Lyndon B. Johnson took office in 1963, he found he was too large for the desk, and instead commissioned a plainer replacement which was built for him by the Senate cabinet shop. Richard Nixon, who succeeded Johnson in 1969, used the Wilson desk, the desk from the Vice President's Room at the United States Capitol, which he had used as Eisenhower's Vice President and mistakenly believed to be that of former president Woodrow Wilson. Gerald Ford, who succeeded to the presidency in 1974 following the resignation of Nixon, used the Wilson desk throughout his term. Jimmy Carter, Ford's successor, brought the Resolute desk back to the Oval Office, where it remained until George H. W. Bush returned the Wilson desk to the Senate, preferring the C&O desk that he used while serving as Vice President during the Reagan Administration. Bill Clinton subsequently brought the Resolute desk back again to the Oval Office, where it has remained since.
  In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited President Barack Obama and gave him the original framed commissioning papers for Resolute and an ornamental pen holder made from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet.
caption: President Donald Trump, joined at the Resolute desk by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins (left) and First Daughter Ivanka Trump, talks with NASA astronauts Peggy Whitson and Jack Fischer onboard the International Space Station, April 24, 2017
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