Notes from my Knapsack 10-8-2026
Jeff Gill
Oval Office design and national self-image
___
Why does the United States look to an office shaped like an oval for its pivot point of power? It's an interesting question to consider. Architecture is how we express ourselves both artistically and politically, in Washington or in Granville alike.
The presidential Oval Office as we've long known it was designed, architecturally, in a Colonial Revival style — not quite a pure Greek Revival — featuring prominent neoclassical architectural elements such as the fireplace, built in symmetrical bookcases, and the ceiling cornice.
In our nation’s history, Greek Revival design in the early 1800s, such as we see much of in Granville, was meant to express the new American nation's democratic and classically rooted ideals. We wanted to show how our new nation had deep roots in classical model, in Athens and Plato and Aristotle, in Demosthenes and Sophocles.
The later Colonial Revival began in our centennial year of 1876, and stayed popular through the early 1900s, a design meant to both offer comfort and reassurance, along with patriotism, merging Greek Revival, Federal, Georgian, and other past American styles into a single modernized approach for early 20th-century applications.
Swasey Chapel here, begun in 1922 & dedicated in 1924, is in sum an eclectic Colonial Revival structure, with hints of Moorish Revival in the bell tower, echoing the Stanford White 1890 "second" Madison Square Garden tower element. (As an aside, the fourth and current MSG is echoed architecturally in Herrick Hall's roof design, another interesting Manhattan echo on the Denison campus.) The Giralda Tower in Seville, the specific inspiration for the progression of architectural orders you see in the tower from top to bottom, was also copied in 1919 with Chicago's Wrigley Building, a possible inspiration.
Colonial Style took all this vertical language into a more Georgian brick and masonry exterior, attached as more of a meetinghouse whole to the horizontal nave, which itself is more of a Stuart Revival interior, albeit with the use of classically Ionic capitals on the columns.
The West Wing's Oval Office leans back even more into Greek Revival, or at least it did. Theodore Roosevelt's wife pushed for the West Wing itself to be built, getting the executive branch out of the family quarters on the second floor of the White House; Ohio's William Howard Taft built the first West Wing Oval as his personal office in 1909 at the end of the building extension. This was fully demolished in FDR's time to build in 1934 essentially the structure we see today on television, with access off the colonnade for his wheelchair, making the White House one of America's first handicapped accessible office buildings.
The shape is a nod to the former office space for many presidents, going back to John Adams, in the Yellow Oval Room upstairs, directly over the more formal but also oval shaped Blue Room, a first floor reception hall. And it is said James Hoban put this ellipse in the middle of the Executive Mansion after seeing in Philadelphia the President's Home for George Washington, where a bow window with three frames was built out from the sitting room on the first floor, for the Father of our Country to stand in during receiving times for the first president. This windowed arc followed the office of the presidency into the White House design, and then over into the West Wing, becoming the Oval Office.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s intrigued by what we say with architecture. Tell him how buildings and interiors speak to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
Jeff Gill
Oval Office design and national self-image
___
Why does the United States look to an office shaped like an oval for its pivot point of power? It's an interesting question to consider. Architecture is how we express ourselves both artistically and politically, in Washington or in Granville alike.
The presidential Oval Office as we've long known it was designed, architecturally, in a Colonial Revival style — not quite a pure Greek Revival — featuring prominent neoclassical architectural elements such as the fireplace, built in symmetrical bookcases, and the ceiling cornice.
In our nation’s history, Greek Revival design in the early 1800s, such as we see much of in Granville, was meant to express the new American nation's democratic and classically rooted ideals. We wanted to show how our new nation had deep roots in classical model, in Athens and Plato and Aristotle, in Demosthenes and Sophocles.
The later Colonial Revival began in our centennial year of 1876, and stayed popular through the early 1900s, a design meant to both offer comfort and reassurance, along with patriotism, merging Greek Revival, Federal, Georgian, and other past American styles into a single modernized approach for early 20th-century applications.
Swasey Chapel here, begun in 1922 & dedicated in 1924, is in sum an eclectic Colonial Revival structure, with hints of Moorish Revival in the bell tower, echoing the Stanford White 1890 "second" Madison Square Garden tower element. (As an aside, the fourth and current MSG is echoed architecturally in Herrick Hall's roof design, another interesting Manhattan echo on the Denison campus.) The Giralda Tower in Seville, the specific inspiration for the progression of architectural orders you see in the tower from top to bottom, was also copied in 1919 with Chicago's Wrigley Building, a possible inspiration.
Colonial Style took all this vertical language into a more Georgian brick and masonry exterior, attached as more of a meetinghouse whole to the horizontal nave, which itself is more of a Stuart Revival interior, albeit with the use of classically Ionic capitals on the columns.
The West Wing's Oval Office leans back even more into Greek Revival, or at least it did. Theodore Roosevelt's wife pushed for the West Wing itself to be built, getting the executive branch out of the family quarters on the second floor of the White House; Ohio's William Howard Taft built the first West Wing Oval as his personal office in 1909 at the end of the building extension. This was fully demolished in FDR's time to build in 1934 essentially the structure we see today on television, with access off the colonnade for his wheelchair, making the White House one of America's first handicapped accessible office buildings.
The shape is a nod to the former office space for many presidents, going back to John Adams, in the Yellow Oval Room upstairs, directly over the more formal but also oval shaped Blue Room, a first floor reception hall. And it is said James Hoban put this ellipse in the middle of the Executive Mansion after seeing in Philadelphia the President's Home for George Washington, where a bow window with three frames was built out from the sitting room on the first floor, for the Father of our Country to stand in during receiving times for the first president. This windowed arc followed the office of the presidency into the White House design, and then over into the West Wing, becoming the Oval Office.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he’s intrigued by what we say with architecture. Tell him how buildings and interiors speak to you at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on X.
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