President Biden has filled the Oval Office with images of American leaders and icons, focusing the room around a massive portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt that hangs across from the Resolute Desk. It is a clear nod to a president who helped the country through significant crises, a challenge Biden now also faces.
The Oval Office is synonymous with the power and majesty of the American presidency. All incoming presidents change the decor of the largely symbolic room to offer a sense of their personality and the type of presidency they hope to have. Biden’s is notable for the sheer number of portraits and busts of well-known American historical figures.
Some are paired, with paintings of former president Thomas Jefferson and former treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton hung near each other — the two men frequently disagreed and were placed together to illustrate the benefits that come from differing views. Biden’s office said the paintings were twinned as “hallmarks of how differences of opinion, expressed within the guardrails of the Republic, are essential to democracy.”
“This Oval is an Oval for Day One,” said Ashley Williams, the deputy director of Oval Office operations, as she gave The Washington Post an exclusive 20-minute tour of the office before Biden set foot inside.
“It was important for President Biden to walk into an Oval that looked like America and started to show the landscape of who he is going to be as president,” Williams said.
Busts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy flank a fireplace in the office. Biden often refers to the impact both men made on the country as part of the civil rights movement.
Biden is also nodding to segments of the Democratic Party’s base via historical references. Behind the Resolute Desk is a bust of Cesar Chavez. The office also includes busts of Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt and a sculpture depicting a horse and rider by Allan Houser of the Chiricahua Apache tribe that once belonged to the late Sen. Daniel K. Inouye (D-Hawaii) — the first Japanese American elected to both houses of Congress.
A painting of Benjamin Franklin is intended to represent Biden’s interest in following science. The painting is stationed near a moon rock set on a bookshelf that is intended to remind Americans of the ambition and accomplishments of earlier generations.
The room also includes paired paintings of former presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and a bust of former senator Daniel Webster, who forcefully defended the Union.