Young John F. Kennedy Jr. particularly enjoyed the Resolute Desk because of the sliding panel at the front that he referred to as a “secret door,” according to Our White House. The panel, however, was a modification made long after its original delivery. The desk arrived at the White House in 1880 as a gift from England’s Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes, per The Collector. The enormous desk is six feet long and weighs over 1,000 pounds. The oak used to construct it was sourced from a British Royal Navy ship named the H.M.S. Resolute. The ship was used in an 1852 Arctic expedition meant to find the remains of explorer Sir John Franklin and his crew, who had set out to find the Northwest Passage in 1845.
The H.M.S. Resolute was frozen in ice and left at sea until an American whaler found it in 1855 and steered it back to a port in Connecticut. The United States government bought the boat, restored it, and returned it to Queen Victoria as a gift. The boat was put back into service by the British Royal Navy for 20 years until it was decommissioned in 1876. Queen Victoria asked that the ship’s wood be used to build desks and returned the United States’ gift by sending one of the desks to the then-current United States president. According to White House History, President Rutherford B. Hayes used the desk on the second floor of the White House, home of the presidential offices until the construction of the West Wing in 1902.
