Yellow Oval Room

The Oval Parlor & Library

The Yellow Oval Room is often used for formal private receptions for important guests. Laura Bush uses it often to entertain female dignitaries. The room has three doors, which lead to the Central Hall, the Truman Balcony, and the Living Room. The room is traditionally decorated with yellow. The furnishing are in the Louis XVI style, assembled during the Jacqueline Kennedy renovation. Like the Blue Room below it, this room is not quite 40 feet by 30 feet.

On 1801 January 1, and before it was even complete, John Adams held the first presidential reception in this room, known then only as "the upstairs oval parlor." Dolley Madison first decorated the room in yellow damask in 1809. In 1851, Abigail Fillmore got an allocation from Congress for books to make the room into the first White House library. Abraham Lincoln added a door to the south end of the east wall to a private passage that let him bypass the hubbub of the hall and people waiting in today's Treaty Room. The Harrisons continued to use the room as a library and family parlor and, in 1889, put the first White House Christmas tree here.

Franklin D Roosevelt converted the room into his study, and it was in this room on December 7, 1941, that he learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to White House historian William Seale, this was "the most important room of Roosevelt's presidency. There he worked, relaxed and there he conducted most of the important business of State." Frances Perkins watched the room quickly fill up "with everything that came his way—a Jefferson chair, another bookcase, another bench, another table, ship models and books and papers piled on the floor. Any room he used invariably got that lived-in and overcrowded look which indicated the complexity and variety of his interests and intentions."

Harry Truman continued to use the room as a study and opened access to a new balcony he added to the South Portico in 1948. Later presidents reserved the room as a parlor for formal receptions and used the Treaty Room nearby as a private study instead.

Adapted from America's First Families: Chapter 3, A Home Within a Symbol:

Across the Center Hall from the two north bedrooms is what became the Yellow Oval Room, decorated in green as a ladies' parlor by Andrew Jackson's niece, Emily Donelson. William Henry Harrison's family clustered here as he lay dying and officials predominated in his bedroom. It remained, however, largely a gathering place for women guests until Sarah Polk outfitted a downstairs room for the same purposes, thus making the family rooms finally off-limits to mere guests.

It was the Fillmores who gave purpose to the room when, in 1850, Congress made a special appropriation of $4,000 to purchase the first multiple volumes of books. This became the first permanent White House library, and here their daughter, Mary Abigail, played her harp for guests. After a long day of telegraphing messages on Union troop movements during the Civil War, Lincoln would join his wife here. Presidents from Hayes to Theodore Roosevelt used it for private meetings. Chester Arthur put his lounge chair here, but Frances Cleveland formalized it with Louis XIII furniture. Nellie Taft dramatically altered the room's look with tapestries and other items she had purchased in Asia.

Despite Prohibition, Harding served alcoholic drinks to his cronies as they played poker in the Oval Room. Draped in "Harding blue," it housed clipping books, a pink doll that shook and winked, and the First Lady's collection of miniature elephants on shelves. The Hoovers created an oddly glamorous look with Chippendale couches upholstered in gold-and-black brocade and green curtains.

Under FDR, the oval study took on a nautical look, displaying the president's collection of naval prints and ship models. Truman used it as a study and met nightly with his wife in closed-door sessions here, during which they reviewed his speeches and political agenda. Eisenhower's military decorations and awards were displayed in cases here, and it was called the "Trophy Room." Jackie Kennedy created a sitting room, reminiscent of the Jefferson-Madison era, with bright yellow furniture. Since 1961, it has been the most formal room on the family floor, where world leaders are brought before a state dinner, for the exchange of official gifts.

Chief Usher Ike Hoover wrote of this room in the Herbert Hoover period:

The oval room next to [the old study] was stripped of its furniture and used for moving pictures in the evening and as a sort of catch-all for furniture that had no other place to rest.

Mrs. Hoover wrote of this room in her tenure:

The six long shining curtains at the bay windows were new, - lettuce green taffeta, looking high on gold leaf-shaped tie-backs. The oval rug - once a dull French blue, dating back to the Wilson era - was dyed the color of the floor, - the black of old wood.

The Hoovers created the open shelf niches flanking the north door. Mrs. Hoover wrote:

They held tall glass doors, necessarily curtained since behind them were rows of shelves, too shallow and irregular to hold books or any collection of displayable treasures. None knew why they could not be full-depth shelves; but someone soon explored and discovered. Behind the cupboards were brick flues, empty and idle and relics of a day of far-past ventilation. They were easily adapted to the setting in of proper shelves, and the result was the two present charming Georgian corner cupboards in the Oval Room, curving as gracefully as the walls themselves, and crowned with a fluted shell that might have come straight from the Hoban pencil itself. The glass doors and their shielding curtains are no more, but rows of warm-colored books give life to the oval room walls, more harmoniously than in the Library days.