Lou Henry Hoover at Monroe Desk

This black and white photograph shows First Lady Lou Henry Hoover seated at a reproduction of the Monroe Doctrine Desk. Mrs. Hoover visited the James Monroe Museum while she served as First Lady and was so impressed with the furniture on exhibit that she requested several of the late Louis XVI style pieces be copied for the Hoover White House. The desk, a pair of hanging shelves, and a flat-top writing table were reproduced by Washington, D.C. cabinetmaker Morris W. Dove in 1932 and installed upstairs in Ulysses S. Grant's former Cabinet Room of the White House, which Mrs. Hoover converted to a sitting area known as the Monroe Room. Today, the room is known as the Treaty Room.