Obama Presidential Center's replica Oval Office in Chicago is nearly complete

Interior designer Michael S. Smith was nearly finished with his extensive 2010 makeover of the White House Oval Office when his phone rang.

It was the White House flower shop. They wanted to know what flowers President Barack Obama would like for the mica-clad coffee table of his newly redecorated office.

Smith had brought warm tones, dramatic woven burgundy curtains, rare books, artwork from Edward Hopper, Native American pottery and much more in his sensitive redo of the Oval Office.

Decorations even included a small working model of Samuel Morse's original telegraph, borrowed from the U.S. Patent Office.

No flowers for the coffee table, though.

Instead, Smith gave the president what would be one of the most popular features of the Obama Oval: a Shaker-style wooden bowl loaded with apples that were free for the taking.

"Even though clearly he loves flowers, the idea of something more practical, something more American ... was so much more interesting and thoughtful for him," Smith remembered. "They would lose 'X' amount of dozens of apples a day because people would take the apples as a keepsake."

Take a look — if you dare — at the Oval Office today, and you wouldn't know Smith's thoughtful redesign ever existed.

But Smith's Oval Office will live again, not in Washington, D.C., but on the South Side as a detailed, full-scale replica located in the museum tower of the $850 million Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. The Oval Office is on the fourth floor of the museum.

Smith led the design of the new space. And virtually everything he put in the Obama-era Oval Office — furniture, books, carpet, artwork down to the smallest detail — will be created in the new space.

"Presidential centers and libraries — the recreation of the Oval Office is always one of the most popular things," Smith said. "I mean, it's thrilling. It's thrilling for me to see it, and I'd been in the real one. But if you hadn't been in the real one, the idea of being able to immersibly experience something like that is kind of magical."

Visitors will be able to walk into the presidential center's Oval Office, sit behind a reproduction of the Resolute Desk and experience the room as Obama and countless visitors, dignitaries and White House staffers saw it then.

That apple bowl will be there, too. Don't try to eat one though: They'll be made of plastic.

Smith donated his Oval Office redesign archives to the Obama Foundation, which provided the museum's exhibit designers the kind of information needed for a detailed and accurate reproduction.

Museum workers used photographs of the space to figure out what was what. They also got help from the White House Historical Association, a nonprofit group founded in 1961 by then-first lady Jacqueline Kennedy.

The White House Office of the Curator pitched in, too. The agency conserves and researches the wealth of furniture, art and decorative objects in the White House.

Museum director Louise Bernard and her collections and exhibitions team are putting more than 70 items on display.

The Grand Rapids, Michigan, maker of the original 23-by-30-foot Obama Oval Office rug — the one that bore the presidential seal and quotes from presidents Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy and Franklin Delano Roosevelt — created a full-size reproduction for the new space.

New York City's Whitney Museum of American Art lent the Obama White House "Burly Cobb’s House, South Truro" and "Cobb’s Barns, South Truro," two 1930s Edward Hopper paintings, to display in the real Oval Office.

Reproductions of the Hopper works will hang in the replica Oval Office under a deal with the Whitney.

The museum had two authorized copies of the paintings that were made for a movie. "The Whitney always asks that any reproduction is either slightly larger or slightly smaller than the original," an Obama Center museum official said.

The Native American artists from Canada and Santa Fe, New Mexico, who created the pottery that was on display at the Obama White House Oval Office were tapped again by Bernard's team.

A full-size reproduction of the Resolute Desk — the big, hand-carved partners' desk that was crafted from the oak timbers of the British ship HMS Resolute and given to the United States by Queen Victoria in 1880 — is there. A company in Indonesia made the replica, Smith said.

The desk even has a replica of the famed red call button. In the White House, the serious-looking device summons a presidential valet. It'll have no function in the Obama Center's Oval Office.

Obama had a hand shaping the new Oval Office, just as he has had with the entire campus.

"President Obama has played such a central role in the entire design of the museum, in terms of the look and feel of the spaces, the content development," Bernard said. "He is a reader, writer, thinker. He's a creative. He cares deeply about arts and culture. He's a film producer. He has an incredibly exacting eye."

And memory, apparently. He remembers almost everything about the office.

"The mandate that came from the president was to just make sure it was an exact replica," said Valerie Jarrett, the Obama Foundation's chief executive officer.

During a recent visit to the replica Oval Office, Obama spotted a framed reproduction of the 1963 March on Washington program. The original — a gift from a friend — was displayed in the Oval Office during his presidency.

"And he noted that it didn't have some of the water stains on it that the original program did," Jarrett said. "But, short of that, it is an absolute replica."

The museum team is working to reproduce the same artificial and natural lighting of the White House Oval Office.

But the Obama Center Oval Office has no outside windows, so designers will use light boxes to mimic sunlight.

Jarrett, a senior presidential adviser in the Obama administration, spent countless hours in the real Oval Office herself.

"What's that commercial where they said, 'Is it live, or is it Memorex?' " Jarrett said. "I would venture to guess that people who visit will not be able to tell whether it's live or Memorex. The art, the rug, the furniture, the apples, every last detail — I think people would have a hard time telling the difference."

The Obama Center has taken justified shots designwise, particularly for the visual severity and height of the museum tower.

So seeing what will be inside the campus' buildings — and examining how the spaces will look and function well — is important.

"I think this is something that can be very different than other presidential centers and libraries, which is this building is so geared to being an active part of the community ... but also a part of the international community," Smith said. "It's a living thing that's going to be about so much more than just the eight years."