U.S. President Joe Biden is seen in the Oval Office of the White House in January 2021 in Washington, DC, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on.
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U.S. President Joe Biden is seen in the Oval Office of the White House in January 2021 in Washington, DC, as Vice President Kamala Harris looks on.
Doug Mills/Getty Images
One of the perks of the presidency is being able to personalize the Oval Office. President Joe Biden shared his views on the Executive Corner of the West Wing in a rare video tour for Architectural Digest magazine.
“I chose the things that sort of represent why I entered public life,” the president said in the statement. video posted Friday.
In his Oval Office, he added four busts of Americans celebrated for their commitment to civil rights: the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., former Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.
Biden shows a photo of himself with his grandson Beau watching from the Historical Solved Office — his recreation of the iconic photo of President John F. Kennedy with his grandson John F. Kennedy Jr. (aka “John-John”) playing under his father’s desk.
Nearby is a portrait of Benjamin Franklin, founder of the University of Pennsylvania. It’s a nod to Biden’s teaching tenure and his children’s alma mater, the president said.
Biden is bipartisan in his borrowing from the White House furniture archives, says presidential historian Alexis Coe. The 46th president kept the gold curtains from the Trump era, but replaced his predecessor’s neutral-toned carpet with Clinton’s dark blue one and owns George W. Bush’s sofa.
He credits his brother James Biden and presidential historian Jon Meacham for most other decorating decisions. The younger Biden and Meacham, he said, helped select the portraits featured above the fireplace: Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton . Leaders, Biden said, represent fundamental possibilities for America. “There’s nothing we can’t do,” he said.
Sketches of abolitionist Frederick Douglass line the hallway leading to a more private office, where the president says he writes his speeches. Inside, there is a wall gallery of framed children’s drawings and letters sent to the president.
Few presidents have renovated or made major changes to the Oval Office, Coe noted. But Biden’s unique contributions to White House furnishings include an Irish rugby team ball signed and gifted by his distant cousins, two of whom are current and former star rugby players in Ireland. There is also a moon stone behind a window, a stone from 1972 lunar sample that NASA loaned to the Oval Office.
“It’s literally a rock from the moon,” Biden said.
In the adjoining Cabinet Room, he shares his Oval Office tradition: storing homemade chocolate chip cookies, all individually wrapped with a presidential seal.
Coe, author of George Washington Biography You never forget your first time, described Biden in the video as “a less demure version of Jackie Kennedy during his famous White House tour“.
As the oldest sitting president and also up for re-election next year, Biden’s tour is a good game for relevance, she added.
“Despite the incessant talk about age, he adapts to a changing population and the kind of home visit they like, with good humor,” she said.
Biden is not the only US president to pay close attention to the interior design and architecture magazine. look inside the White House residence. But he is the first sitting president to appear in the magazine’s Open Door video tour series, a treatment typically reserved for Hollywood stars and design influencers.
“During an election year, presidents sometimes promote their administration in the same way a celebrity would promote a movie,” Coe said. “They’re on prime-time shows, so why not offer video tours? The AD (tour) was definitely more enjoyable than time spent on a late-night host’s couch.”
