The Resolute desk, also known as the Hayes desk, is a nineteenth-century partners desk used by several presidents of the United States in the White House as the Oval Office desk, including the six living presidents. The desk was a gift from Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880 and was built from the oak timbers of the British Arctic exploration ship HMS Resolute. The 1,300-pound (590-kilogram) desk was created by William Evenden, a skilled joiner at Chatham Dockyard in Kent, probably from a design by Morant, Boyd, & Blanford. The desk has been modified twice, with a kneehole panel added in 1945 and a 2-inch-tall (5.1 cm) plinth added to the desk in 1961.
President Barack Obama sitting at the Resolute desk in 2009
The Resolute desk before any modifications were made in William Howard Taft's Presidential Study.
President Ronald Reagan working at the Resolute desk with both the kneehole panel and plinth additions visible.
A view of Resolute, Intrepid, Pioneer, and Assistance, before they left Beechey Island
The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum is the presidential library and museum of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917–1963), the 35th president of the United States (1961–1963). It is located on Columbia Point in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, next to the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum. Designed by the architect I. M. Pei, the building is the official repository for original papers and correspondence of the Kennedy Administration, as well as special bodies of published and unpublished materials, such as books and papers by and about Ernest Hemingway.
The John F, Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum as seen from the Boston Harborwalk on the Columbia Point segment
From the pavilion (pictured), designer I. M. Pei says there is a restricted access area that offers the best view in the complex.
Freedom 7, flown in 1961 by Alan Shepard to become the first American in space (formerly on display at the U.S. Naval Academy), displayed at the Kennedy Library until 2021, when it was moved to the Smithsonian.