If the White House were to take its cues from spy flicks and TV, it would be an architectural enigma, replete with hidden passages, eerie portraits with peepholes, and trap doors covered by tapestries. In reality, if you ask historian William Seale, the neoclassical-style house patterned after an 18th-century home in Ireland is “more uncomplicated in plan and layout than nearly anyone might believe possible,” given the high level of security and organizational systems required to assure the safety of its occupants. In other words: It’s pretty boring. But—because everyone loves some intrigue—the White House hides a secret. In fact, beyond the often-filmed Oval Office and sprawling 132 rooms, there’s a whole network of underground passages and rooms buried beneath its stately exterior—with a presidential bunker that serves as a place of refuge for POTUS and comrades in the event of a national emergency. Here’s what we know.

When Was the Presidential Bunker Built?

During World War II, the threat of a nuclear armageddon sent the world into a panic. Both the Soviet Union and the United States constructed extensive nuclear arsenals and with that, built secret underground bunkers for protection from opposing strikes. It was at that time that the Office of Civilian Defense had pronounced the White House a firetrap, and begged President Franklin D. Roosevelt to move elsewhere. The president declined, but after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, he immediately ordered work to begin on a bomb shelter to be added to the East Wing.

The gutted interior of the White House, May 1950.

The new extension was built behind high wood fences, with no hint to the public that it was under construction (they claimed that the East Wing was being renovated as a museum, according to Seale). In the interim of its completion, a temporary entrance was constructed via the Treasury building and leading to the Treasury basement next door. This arrangement was abandoned when the bunker was finished. Once complete, Roosevelt reportedly inspected it just once and never returned.

The Truman reconstruction between 1949 and 1952 included a steel structure built within the White House’s exterior shell.

Today, the facility—referred to as the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC)—is staffed by the White House Military Office soldiers in 12- or 24-hour shifts.

Where Is the Presidential Bunker?

The bunker is located beneath the White House’s East Wing, accessible via a secret elevator. In her 2010 memoir, First Lady Laura Bush describes her 9/11 experience of going through a pair of big steel doors to access an unfinished subterranean hallway underneath the White House on her way to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) conference room. “I was hustled inside and downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal,” Bush wrote. “We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment.” Our James Bond–loving minds like to imagine that entrance to the room requires something like biometric access with fingerprint and retina scanners, but the White House has remained largely quiet on the matter, for obvious reasons.

While specifics about the bunker are highly classified, we do know that the highest yield nuclear warhead in the U.S. arsenal today can blast up to 1,000 feet deep, as the Union of Concerned Scientists points out. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that the presidential bunker must be at least that deep.

What’s Inside the Presidential Bunker?

Senior White House staff listen to President Bush’s Address in the President’s Emergency Operations Center on September 11, 2001.

Design snobs, be prepared to be astonished. While the White House has remained rather close-lipped on the bunker’s interior aesthetic, images of past presidents in the space reveal grim concrete walls and a small tomblike central room, complete with a large oak oval table, a pair of flat-screen televisions, and what we assume are satellite-connected phones that can reach the Pentagon with the touch of a button. From these images, it’s clear to even the untrained eye that the visionaries behind this engineering feat were placing safety and security at top of mind—with little to no regard for comfort, aesthetics, and what’s on trend at the moment. Where’s ELLE DECOR when you need it?

Wait, There’s a Second Bunker?

The PEOC isn’t the only secret space that the president could be whisked away to in case of emergency, however. Sure, we’ve all heard about the house’s below-ground bowling alley, secret White House chocolate shop, and basement presidential dentistry room—but recent events have revealed that these passageways might be the tip of the architectural iceberg.

In 2018, The Drive reported on a bunker found after a sinkhole developed on the North Lawn of the White House. Separate from the presidential bunker, “this is an entirely different and far more secure facility, and in recent years it was likely augmented by a much more extravagant and modern complex buried deep beneath the western side of the North Lawn adjacent to the West Wing,” according to the report.

Landscapers work to repair a sinkhole that opened on the lawn outside the north side of the White House West Wing on May 25, 2018, in Washington, D.C.

What they saw was the White House’s Deep Underground Command Center (DUCC), a second bunker that is made of thick, unbreakable concrete strong enough to withstand nuclear radiation. While this panic room is shrouded in secrecy, The Richest purported that it doubles as a command center and temporary living quarters, outfitted with communication equipment, its own air supply, oxygen tanks, and lasting food supply—in addition to a bed, kitchen, and bathroom.

And the second bunker may be only the start. While there’s also a 761-foot long path that connects the East Wing to the secret basement of the adjacent treasury building, which was formerly a Roosevelt air raid shelter, it’s possible that there’s a whole city’s worth of subterranean hideouts beyond the White House. In a 2008 book review, NPR reported that the presidential bunker was “one of several Cold War–era nuclear-hardened subterranean bunkers built during the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, the nearest of which were located hundreds of feet below bedrock in places such as Mount Weather, in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, and along the Maryland-Pennsylvania border not far from Camp David.” In other words, if the president up and disappears for weeks on end, we’d wager he or she is partying deep below with plenty of spaces to inhabit.

Who Has Used the Bunker?

President Bush with Vice President Cheney in the PEOC.

Several moments in U.S. history have necessitated a jaunt to the presidential bunker. On September 11, 2001, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could be seen in photos from the U.S. National Archives at this long oval table, discussing the aftermath beneath the presidential seal. Later, in June 2020, President Donald Trump took shelter in the official bunker for nearly an hour amid protests in Washington D.C. For each incoming president since Roosevelt, an inspection of the bomb shelter became a first-day custom for all incoming presidents, though the shelter’s relevance has waned in recent years and it’s possible that practice is no longer a necessity.