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lAJad/iin^lond Inner Sanctum
Described by one who is there, when the President makes his Fireside Chats.
By WALTER COMPTON
TO THE many millions of Ameri-Jj cans, Washington is a place of^ glamour, a city of statesmanlike^ achievement. The average visitor to,*^ the Nation's Capital, in normal times, \ takes a day touring the Smithsonian Institution and, more recently, the Mellon Art Gallery. He pays thirty cents for a cab ride to Capitol Hill, gawks up at the great dome, pauses before the statue of Will Rogers, nudges his companion as a famous Senator or Congressman passes in the corridor. He goes into the House Chamber, sits in the gallery and finds that legislation is a pretty dull pro' cedure. The next day he gets the big thrill — this is in normal times, remember — he takes the public tour of the White House.
But our average visitor never gets into the Inner Sanctum; he never gets beyond the great stairway which leads from the basement of the Executive Mansion to the East Room, the great Hall and the other rooms, decorated in various colors, which give thereon. Those rooms he sees. But not the Inner Sanctum. Yet, that one room has been for almost twelve years the focal point of America. It's one
of the most familiar locales in the world, to millions all over the world. It is the Oval Room of the White House.
It's really not a very interesting room, as rooms go. Its major feature is its egg shape. Located in the basement of the White House, it lies beneath the Blue Room, which is on the main floor. Entering upon it are four doors, one from the corridor which bisects the building, another giving upon the south portico, and two from the rooms where, in the earHer days of the Roosevelt regime, the gifts and curios from admiring citizens were kept.
The shape of the room and the great thick walls, characteristic of the construction of the early 19th century, turn the doorways into alcoves perhaps four feet wide by an equal depth. Across three of these alcoves hang red velvet curtains, broken by small isinglass windows. From these three improvised booths, the official White House announcers of CBS, Mutual and NBC speak their pieces. The Blue Network, latest arrival on the scene, has a little box very similar to a telephone booth. The walls of