page_title: Eric Gugler
section_title: The White House
hierarchical_section_title: Eric Gugler / Biography / The White House
caption_attribution_description: English: West Wing reconstruction in 1934.
context_page_description: Eric Gugler was an American Neoclassical architect, interior designer, sculptor and muralist. He was selected by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to design the Oval Office.
context_section_description: Dissatisfied with the size and layout of the West Wing, President Franklin D. Roosevelt engaged Gugler to redesign it in 1933. To create additional space without increasing the apparent size of the building, he excavated a full basement, added a set of subterranean offices under the adjacent lawn, and built an unobtrusive "penthouse" story. The directive to wring the most office space out of the existing building was responsible for its narrow corridors and cramped staff offices. His most visible addition was the expansion of the building eastward for a new Cabinet Room and Oval Office.
  Gugler served as consulting architect to the White House, 1934–48. He designed the Honduras mahogany case for the Steinway & Sons grand piano (1938) – serial number 300,000 – in the East Room. Albert Stewart modeled the large gilded eagles that are its legs. Dunbar Beck painted its gold-leaf mural that depicts five scenes of indigenous American music—a New England barn dance, a cowboy with guitar, a Virginia reel, a pair of black field hands singing, and Native American ceremonial dancers.
  For the State Dining Room mantel, in 1945 Gugler designed the inscription of John Adams's 1800 benediction for the White House:
  I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.
caption: West Wing under construction, 1934.
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