In art and in news media, there hasn’t been a president, real or pretend, who hasn’t been seen sitting behind the Resolute Desk—an 1880 gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes—looking stern or pensive or accomplished, depending, of course, on the moment. But the idea that the president has a desk and that desk is the president’s desk, though, is a relatively new one: Plenty of nineteenth-century Commanders in Chief brought furniture from elsewhere, while others oversaw White House redecorations that included custom furniture, which itself would be modified by later administrations.
The Resolute, too, was altered by a president, but it has become so ingrained in the national consciousness as the Place Where the President Sits that it is virtually impossible to imagine a future U.S. head of state making changes to its structure or appearance—and equally impossible to imagine one choosing to sit anywhere else.