White House Tour - Map Room

VIDEO (:42) AUDIO (:42) Peter Petrochko Wood Vessel

Used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a situation room from which to follow the course of World War II, the Map Room now serves as a private meeting room for the President and First Lady. Resting on a Chippendale-style table is a wood bowl by Peter Petrochko, a wood turner from Connecticut. The undulating surface combined with its strong horizontal and vertical patterning is suggestive of topography and the lines of latitude and longitude. Above the bowl hangs a rare 1775 French version of a map charted by the colonial surveyor Peter Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson's father.