Navy Seabees built a desk for Vice President Kamala Harris made of timber from a historic warship as part of an effort to craft a desk of comparable historical significance to the president’s Resolute desk.
The U.S. Naval Construction Force built the desk using wood from the USS Constitution, the world’s oldest commissioned warship still afloat. The Constitution was first launched in 1797 in Boston as one of the U.S. Navy’s first six frigates.
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An eagle and stars drawn from the Constitution’s stern are carved into the desk, which Harris received in February.
“The desk project was initiated to deliver a desk of comparable … provenance, history, and heritage as the president’s HMS Resolute desk,” according to the U.S. Navy. Crafted from the wood of the British HMS Resolute, that desk was as a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes from Queen Victoria in 1880.
The vice president’s version began under former President Donald Trump, with Seabees starting construction in early January.
A second desk, built for the Secretary of the Navy, was made using materials from the frigates USS Constitution, USS Chesapeake, sloop of war USS Constellation, and battleships USS Texas, USS New Jersey, and USS Arizona.
The construction of both desks took about seven weeks.
Those who worked on the desks pointed to the potential significance for the country, and for the military in particular, of decisions made before them.
“Knowing they’ll sit there every day is huge. The importance of their job can affect everything we do,” said Navy Builder 1st Class Hilary Lemelin, who is assigned to the USS Constitution. “It’s a piece of history now.”
Inside each desk is a pen tray with a note from former Secretary of the Navy Kenneth Braithwaite and a piece of the USS Arizona, the battleship that sank during the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.
Lemelin said this part would be a constant reminder of the officeholder’s power and the country’s history.
“Every time they open that tray to sign an important document that could potentially change the Navy or the nation, I think I put that there for them to use,” Lemelin said. “For me, that’s history, and we’re helping whoever sits in those seats think about the immense weight they hold.”
According to recent photographs, Harris’s new desk appears to sit in her West Wing office. The vice president has another office at the White House, a ceremonial office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, used primarily for interviews, meetings, and the swearing-in of Cabinet officials, and once used as the Navy secretary’s office. She has another office in the U.S. Capitol.
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The vice president’s desk in the EEOB was first used by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 and later belonged to Presidents William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Harry Truman.
Harris’s office did not respond to a request for comment confirming the desk’s whereabouts.
