In the early years of Presidential Library architecture, the 37th president asked for a replica oval office, a feature he heard was popular inside Truman’s. ... The Master of the Senate only needed seven minutes to get what he wanted out of Gordon Bunshaft.
With construction already underway on the presidential library he was designing in Austin, the architect took a phone call from his workaholic client after dinner on October 10, 1968.
Then-president Lyndon B. Johnson had just found out about the replica Oval Office inside Harry Truman’s presidential library, and he absolutely had to have one, too. “That is the most attractive thing [inside the Truman library], they tell me,” said the President. “I’d rather have that than anything else.” ... The library, with an Oval Office replica on the 10th floor, opened to the public on May 22, 1971.