Why an Oval Office? 

So much of history is lost again when we do not read it. Why do we have an Oval Office, why do presidents work there, and where is it relative to the world? As we welcome back a president who made history – over and over – in the Oval Office, a few facts are worth recalling. 

Standing in the Rose Garden, which I often did during the Reagan and Bush 41 White Houses, you realize how small the White House really is.  With your back to the South lawn, where Marine One lands, the white-columned “colonnade” stands before you. The Oval Office is to your left. 

The Rose Garden is a gem, flower-ringed rectangle, 125 feet by 60, where presidents – when all the lights go down – can step out of the Oval’s French doors and suddenly be alone in the cloister, quiet.  

We need places like hiking trails, lakeside stumps, and places where flowers and peace restore our souls. So do presidents, more than most. The Rose Garden is that place, quiet and removed. 

Funny, quirky, or ironic is the study of history, and how time changes places. In the first days of Theodore Roosevelt’s tenure, in 1901 after McKinley’s assassination, the Rose Garden was stables.  

TR’s wife, Edith, thought they could do better than stables, so they commissioned a “proper colonial garden.” Since TR rode his horse along the Potomac every morning, one can only wonder how that happened, but it did. White House stables became a garden, and over time, it became “The Rose Garden.”  

But what about that Oval Office? Hard to believe, but here is the story. When George Washington first took up his presidential residence in Philadelphia, remembering “Washington” – the city – came later – the Revolutionary War General liked formality and felt it added respect to the Republic.  

Accordingly, in Philadelphia, the house he occupied had, as most do, four square walls. He did not like that. He felt it did not reflect military or British tradition, which involved a “levee,” visitors or officers arrayed in a semicircle for introduction. So, he ordered one wall pushed out, semicircular.  

This led visitors to stand in a semi-circle, opposite Washington’s fireplace, where Washington greeted them by name going around that semi-circle. The tradition is older, but that’s the gist.  

For reference and to understand how civilian, secular architecture followed the early Church, think of the Romanesque and Gothic churches, semicircular apse behind the altar, a kind of half circle. 

Even in pre-Roman, Orthodox churches, a semi-circular apse, concave overhead, was used. It was harmonic. Fast forward to Revolutionary America. Washington liked the Ancients and Church and felt America was based on Christian values, so they adopted the semicircle.  

Fast forward again to 1902. Just as our  Founders revered the Ancients, many reading Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, German and Russian, TR was a voracious reader of the Ancients. 

Thus, while his wife Edith replaced the stables with a garden, TR commissioned an “Oval Office,” part of a new “West Wing” for the White House. To be honest, this gives TR more credit than deserved, as the original White House had other ovals, the “Blue Room,” “Yellow Room” on the third floor, and “Diplomatic Rooms.”  

So, here is the story in a nutshell: Greeks, Romans, and Byzantine churches liked semicircles and the formality it conveys, which led various militaries and George Washington to put a semicircular room in his home in Philadelphia, which transferred to the White House, and in 1902 the “Oval Office.” 

Technically, the West Wing was finished in 1909, but TR conceived the Oval Office. From that day to this, while Jefferson liked a corner of the State Room, presidents work – and entertain – in the Oval.  

Why is all this important?  Do you really want to know? It is not. Only for those who love history, who understand we are shaped by forces beyond knowing, and so are presidents, does it matter. So much of history is lost and lost again when we do not know or read it.  

Why do we have an Oval Office? Because of the early church, the semicircle was important. Our Founders and many early presidents saw a link between church and destiny, thus the Oval. Where is it? Beside the Rose Garden, a place of peace. Where will the president work? In the Oval, besides peace. 

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.