The Resolute desk is a nineteenth-century partners' desk used by several presidents of the United States in the White House Oval Office as the Oval Office desk. It was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the English oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute. Franklin Roosevelt requested the addition of a door with the presidential seal to conceal his leg braces.[1] Many presidents since Hayes have used the desk at various locations in the White House.[2]
The desk was removed from the White House after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, when President Lyndon Johnson allowed it to go on a traveling exhibition with other artifacts of the Kennedy Presidential Library. It was then put on display in the Smithsonian Institution.
President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office in 1977, where it has remained with every president since, excepting George H. W. Bush, who used the C&O desk in the Oval Office, but kept the Resolute desk in the White House.