Many of our most celebrated national figures have participated in the historical events that have taken place within the OEOB's granite walls. Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met here with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. President Herbert Hoover occupied the Secretary of Navy's office for a few months following a fire in the Oval Office on Christmas Eve, 1929. In recent history, President Richard Nixon had a private office here. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was the first in a succession of Vice Presidents to the present day that have had offices in the building.
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Theodore
Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under John D. Long prior to
the Spanish-American War. (Library of Congress)
Gradually, the original tenants of the OEOB vacated the building - the Navy Department left in 1918 (except for the Secretary who stayed until 1923), followed by the War Department in 1938, and finally by theState Department in 1947. The White House began to move some of its offices across West Executive Avenue in 1939, and in 1949 the building was turned over to the Executive office of the President and given its present name. The building continues to house various agencies that comprise the Executive Office of the President, such as the White House Office, the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council.
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