WASHINGTON (AP) — A replica Oval Office on display near the White House now looks exactly like President Donald Trump’s. But it is not the blingy version he is currently using.
Visitors starting Thursday will experience the mock Oval Office as it was in the Republican president’s first term, until it is redecorated again next year to incorporate the golden touches and other flourishes Trump brought to the workspace after he returned to power in January.
“Just like the White House itself, our Oval Office is a living space, so it changes and evolves as the actual Oval Office changes,” Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Association, said Wednesday as he led The Associated Press on a tour of the space as it was being revamped.
The mock-up is inside “The People’s House: A White House Experience,” an educational center the association opened last year one block west of the Executive Mansion.
Few regular people ever see, let alone step inside, the real Oval Office, for security and other reasons. But the true-to-life model offers visitors a chance to see and experience it. It will be updated to match the decor of every sitting president.
When the historical association opened the center last year, the replica Oval Office looked like Democrat Joe Biden’s office because he was the president at the time.
The association has to get copies made of every item in the real Oval Office and that process takes time, McLaurin said. He also preferred to wait until there was a “critical mass” of items instead of doing a slow, piece-by-piece makeover.
Trump decorated his first-term Oval Office with a beige-patterned rug from the Ronald Reagan era, gold-colored draperies from Bill Clinton’s tenure and a lighter, floral wallpaper that replaced a striped wall covering installed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump kept these same designs for his second term.
Trump also kept the Resolute Desk, which has been used by nearly every president since it was gifted to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 by Queen Victoria. It was built using wood from the British ship HMS Resolute.
Trump hung a large portrait of George Washington above the fireplace, flanked by portraits of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. He also displayed portraits of Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Franklin and had busts of Martin Luther King Jr. and Winston Churchill on tables on either side of the fireplace.
The association is in the process of reproducing items in Trump’s second-term office even as he continues to make changes by adding gilding, artwork and other objects.
“So probably in a year or a little more, we’ll be able to make that transition when we have all of those items ready,” McLaurin said.
The Biden items will be donated to his foundation for possible use in his future presidential library, and the same will be done in the future with the items reproduced for Trump’s offices.
The White House Historical Association was created in 1961 by first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to help preserve the museum quality of the interior of the White House and educate the public. It is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that receives no government funding. It raises money mostly through private donations and merchandise sales, including an annual Christmas ornament.
