WASHINGTON — President Trump has designated the Oval Office, the Outer Oval Office and the Cabinet Room as the Oval Office National Monument, a proclamation that puts the National Park Service in charge of protecting the rooms’ historic character and requires a review of alternatives before any major structural change. The proclamation, signed Nov. 5, was published in the Federal Register on Thursday as Proclamation 11080.
“The Oval Office stands as one of the most recognizable and historically significant spaces in the United States,” the proclamation says. It calls the room “a symbol of the American Presidency itself,” says “decisions of profound national and international consequence have been made within its walls,” and finds that it “merits specific recognition and protective management as a discrete historic structure of national significance.”
Trump described the goal at the signing. “We’ve had tremendous victory in this office,” he said, according to ABC News. “So we’re making it a national monument, and it will not be allowed to be touched by anybody, destroyed, ripped down by stupid people in order to build something in a slightly different shape.” He added, “We like the Oval Office, and it’s a symbol like the White House itself,” The Washington Post reported.
What the proclamation does
Trump acted under the Antiquities Act, which lets a president declare historic structures on federal land to be national monuments and reserve “the smallest area compatible with the proper care and management” of them. The monument covers four rooms: the Oval Office (Room 110), the Outer Oval Office (Rooms 106 and 108) and the Cabinet Room (Room 105).
The Interior secretary, through the Park Service, must manage the monument to protect “its historic character, architectural integrity, and association with the Presidency.” The order directs Interior to write a management plan with the White House Office of Administration, to require “documentation, review, and consideration of alternatives before any action that would substantially alter or demolish” the rooms or their essential architectural elements, and to coordinate with the Committee for the Preservation of the White House.
The White House and its grounds are already federal property run by the Park Service as part of the President’s Park and are already a National Historic Landmark, the proclamation notes.
What it leaves to future presidents
The order includes two limits. It says nothing in it restricts “the President’s authority to redecorate the monument, select furnishings, or make ordinary operational and security modifications” that do not substantially impair the rooms’ historic structure. It also says it does not change the White House’s existing exemptions under the National Historic Preservation Act or diminish Congress’s authority over federal property.
At the signing, Trump said he would send the designation to Congress to be ratified and that “no major modification” would take place in the rooms “without the approval of Congress,” ABC News reported. The proclamation itself does not require congressional action. Asked whether a future president could remove the gold accents he has added to the Oval Office, Trump said a successor could, but “very carefully,” according to ABC.
The Post reported that the legal force of the order was unclear and that future presidents could revisit it. Monument designations have been revised before. ABC noted that Trump shrank the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah, which President Biden later restored before Trump reversed them again.
The proclamation traces the room’s oval design to the West Wing office added under President William Howard Taft, refined in the early 1930s, and says the office has served as the president’s principal working office since it took its present location and form under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The designation follows a year of construction at the White House. The administration tore down the East Wing in October 2025 for a ballroom, and Trump invited reporters to the site on Nov. 4 to watch the final beam raised, ABC reported. “I’m doing it because the White House is the ultimate symbol of America, and it’s got to be pristine,” Trump said then. The administration has asked the Supreme Court to end a lawsuit over the ballroom, saying the project is 70% complete, the Inquisitor reported this week.
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