page_title: Wilson desk
section_title: Timeline
hierarchical_section_title: Wilson desk / Timeline
caption_attribution_description: English: From the Nixon Library. Image ID WHPO E2679c-09A.
context_page_description: The desk in Vice President's Room of the United States Capitol, coloqually known as the Wilson desk, is a large mahogany desk used by Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the Oval Office as their Oval Office desk. One of only six desks used by a President in the Oval office, it was purchased between 1897 and 1899 by Garret Augustus Hobart, the 24th Vice President of the United States, for the Vice President's Room in the United States Capitol.
  Nixon chose this desk for the Oval Office because of his mistaken belief that former President Woodrow Wilson had used it there. In 1971 Nixon had five recording devices secretly installed in the Wilson desk by the United States Secret Service. These recordings constitute some of the Watergate tapes.
  Nixon referred to the desk in 1969 in his "Silent majority" speech, stating "Fifty years ago, in this room and at this very desk, President Woodrow Wilson spoke words which caught the imagination of a war-weary world." In actuality, the desk was never used by Woodrow Wilson in the Oval office.
context_section_description: Below is a table with the location of the desk from its purchase by Garret Augustus Hobart to present day and each tenant of the desk.
caption: President Nixon at the Wilson desk giving a televised address explaining release of edited transcripts of the Watergate tapes on April 29, 1974
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