Press Preview for the Reopening of the Blue Room

This photograph is of First Lady Pat Nixon speaking with journalists during a press preview of the Blue Room restoration on May 15, 1972. The refurbished Blue Rooms style was inspired by the French Bellangé suite of furniture President James Monroe purchased for the room in 1817. The walls were covered with beige wallpaper, featuring an upper frieze with a flower and bowl design, and a lower border of pink flowers, cupids, and Greek figures. Blue curtains hung the length of the room. The room also included a new oval plaster design in the center of the ceiling completed by Herbert John Millard, a wood carver from Roswell, Georgia.