1902

A White House "restoration" was undertaken by President Theodore Roosevelt. The 19th-century conservatories were razed, and a new "temporary" Executive Office Building, later called the West Wing, was erected. President Theodore Roosevelt worked in his new rectangular office for the first time on November 5. The first cabinet meeting was held in the new wing on November 6.

1909

The West Wing was doubled in size and included the first presidential Oval Office centered on the south facade. William Howard Taft became the first president to work in the Oval Office.

1912

On February 14, President Taft signed legislation in an Oval Office ceremony authorizing statehood for Arizona and New Mexico. He became the first chief executive to preside over 48 states.

1915

On January 25, President Woodrow Wilson, with assembled guests in the Oval Office, listened in on the first transcontinental call from New York to San Francisco.

1917

President Wilson signed the declaration of war against the Axis powers on April 7. The Executive Office Building immediately became a war center open around the clock as 60 to 75 clerks and other personnel manned the telegraphs, telephones, and the equivalent of a map room.

1923

Warren Harding became the first president to die in office since the construction of the executive offices. His desk in the Oval Office was draped with black crepe in memoriam.

1929

Herbert Hoover was the first president to have a telephone installed on his desk on March 27. A fire on Christmas Eve 1929 gutted the Executive Office Building and a reconstruction began immediately.

Video Extra : The 1929 West Wing Fire [click icon]

1934

President Franklin D. Roosevelt increased the office area of a now permanent office wing from 15,000 to 40,000 square feet. A "penthouse" story and an enlarged subterranean office area with a lightwell were built. The Oval Office was relocated to the West Wing’s southeast corner-its present location-to overlook the Wilson Rose Garden.

1935

The Social Security Act was signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a bill-signing ceremony in the Cabinet Room on August 14.

Video Extra : FDR addresses the nation [click icon]

1941

Crowds of angry Americans surrounded the White House on December 7 as news spread of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Secret Service installed bulletproof glass in the windows of the president’s Oval Office, sentries patrolled the roof with machine guns, and builders constructed a bomb shelter under a new East Wing (1942).

1945

On April 12, Harry S. Truman was sworn in as president in the Cabinet Room. The ceremony, according to Truman’s recollections, took one minute, 7:08-7:09 p.m. On August 14, 1945, President Truman held a press conference in the Oval Office to announce Japan’s surrender and the end of World War II.

Video Extra : President Truman at Work [click icon]

1949

To avoid confusion the White House Executive Office Building became known officially as the West Wing when the adjacent Department of State Building (Eisenhower EOB) was converted for use as executive offices.

1954

October 25 marked the first telecast of a cabinet meeting in the West Wing.

Video Extra : President Truman's last Speech as President, 1952 [click icon]

Video Extra : President Eisenhower Press Conference, 1953 [click icon]

Video Extra : "Ike's Day," 1957 [click icon]

1961

President John F. Kennedy had the Rose Garden redesigned to serve presidential functions.

Video Extra : Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy meet the Press [click icon]

1962

The West Wing became the center of a world crisis as the possibility of a nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union loomed over a confrontation about Soviet nuclear-capable missiles placed in Cuba.

Video Extra : The Cuban Missile Crisis [click icon]

1963

Civil Rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and A. Philip Randolph, conferred with President Kennedy in the Oval Office prior to the Freedom March on Washington on August 28.

Video Extra : The Kennedy Assassination [click icon]

Video Extra : President Johnson at the White House [click icon]

1967

On June 13, President Lyndon B. Johnson announced to the press in the Rose Garden the nomination of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American to serve as a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1968

President Johnson announced on television on March 31 from the Oval Office that he would not run for re-election. His dramatic decision was made in the hopes that the Vietnam War might be resolved if he removed himself from the center of the conflict.

1969

"Hello, Neil and Buzz. I’m talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made." President Richard Nixon spoke from the Oval Office by radiotelephone to Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong and Lunar module pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin on July 20.

1969-1970

Additional offices were built reducing the size of the Reception Lobby. A press center was created within the West Terrace, and a porte-cochere and circular drive were added.

1971

Patricia Nixon (daughter of President and Mrs. Richard Nixon) married Edward Finch Cox in the Rose Garden on June 12.

1973-1974

In the summer of 1973, it was revealed that President Nixon secretly taped private conversations that he had in the Oval Office. One year later, the tapes were given to Congress and they proved Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. Rather than face impeachment, Nixon resigned. He announced his decision to leave office in a television address on August 8. President Gerald R. Ford announced his controversial decision to pardon Richard Nixon from the White House press room.

1979

Islamic militants stormed the United States Embassy in Tehran, Iran, and took Americans hostage. The West Wing once again became a crisis center as President Jimmy Carter and his staff planned a response.

1981

President Ronald Reagan announced the appointment of Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court in a Rose Garden ceremony. O’Connor became the first female to be sworn in as Supreme Court Justice on September 25.

1986

President Reagan and his staff watched a tape of the space shuttle Challenger launch from the West Wing offices on January 28 and with the nation mourned the horrific explosion.

1991

The U.S.-led multinational force launched Operation Desert Storm on January 16 to begin the Persian Gulf War against Iraq. President George Bush transformed the West Wing into a strategic center to plan a build up and invasion that ended Iraqi occupation of Kuwait and forced Iraq’s acceptance of U.N. ceasefire terms that formally ended the war.

1995

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed. Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to traffic.

1998

The U.S. House of Representatives approved two of four proposed Articles of Impeachment against President Bill Clinton. The president held a Rose Garden rally with supporters and later was acquitted of the two articles by the Senate.

2001

Terrorists attack the United States on September 11. Once again the West Wing became a logistical center for the nation at war.

2002

The West Wing celebrated its 100th birthday on November 5.