When I visited the West Wing on a tour a few weeks ago, I was surprised by the scale of it. It was less grand than I expected. The interiors felt like a country club or hotel, and were strung together by construction site passages. There were lot of closed doors, and wooden colonial-style tables, bookcases, and armchairs. I saw the special dining room; with its cluster of white table cloths, the table settings all in place. One table had a huge lazy-Susan in the middle. The tables were surrounded by detailed oil paintings of ships. In the West Wing, there is always a phone sitting on a side table somewhere in a hallway or an entryway.
For me, the most memorable thing was the photography taken by the staff photographers. This happens on a daily basis, so there are a lot of images to edit from. These photographs were hung everywhere throughout the West Wing. They depict the president and vice president's daily duties, meetings and visits, and their families at any time in any given week. These images are changed up every month for the staff and the visitors. They felt full of hidden information and fed some kind of voyeuristic need I had in visiting the place. They had a "Just like us" US Magazine feel to them. Seeing these photographs, and a doorway that we couldn't go through -as it opened to a 30 foot walkway into to the East Wing- were the most exciting moments I had visiting the West Wing.
Of course there were a lot of other things to take note of, but it's always interesting what sticks out. I always want more access.
