Diplomatic Reception Room (White House)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Diplomatic Reception Room is a large oval room on the ground floor in the White House, the home of the president of the United States. The room is often used for receiving foreign dignitaries. The room has four doors, which lead to the Map Room, the Center Hall, the China Room, and a small vestibule that leads to the south lawn.
The walls of the Diplomatic Reception Room are decorated with antique wallpaper depicting landscape scenes called "Views of North America."
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[edit] History
For its first hundred years, the ground floor of the White House was merely thought of as a basement. Domestic staff used it for storage, kitchens, and maintenance. They gathered in this room to do mending and to polish the White House silver. In 1837, the Van Buren administration installed a furnace here for the White House's first central heating system. Later steam boilers replaced it and were removed only as part of the 1902 renovation that made the ground floor livable (the White House is now heated and cooled by mechanical systems in the sub-basement).
In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt had a chimney opened so he could conduct his famous "fireside chats." Rebuilt by Harry Truman as a modern parlor, it was refurbished in 1960 under Dwight Eisenhower in the style of the Federal period. First Lady Jackie Kennedy's antique landscape wallpaper was added in 1962 and (unlike the Revolutionary War scenes she papered the second floor's Private Dining Room with) has remained ever since.
[edit] Trivia
- In the television series The West Wing, this room was called the "Mural Room".
