(FORTUNE Magazine) – What will the world's biggest oil company take with it in the August move of its corporate headquarters from New York City to Dallas? Answer (in part): 1,637 chairs, 331 desks, 651 file cabinets, 56 sofas, 66 credenzas -- and 200 of its 300 headquarters employees.

Exxon pulled out all the stops when it came to wooing everybody from executives on down, including administrative assistant Rhoda Green (see photo). In addition to providing such usual things as house-hunting trips and career counseling for spouses, the company hired the Relocation Center of Irving, Texas, a firm that helps corporations settle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Other clients: subsidiaries of GTE, Occidental Petroleum, and PepsiCo. Exxon is moving into temporary headquarters until a new building -- price undisclosed -- is finished in 1993. Relocation Center guides accompanied skeptical Exxon employees during three- day orientation trips and extolled such Texan virtues as good Mexican restaurants and cowboy boots. In a slide show to employees, they flashed the October 23, 1989, issue of Fortune that declared Dallas and Fort Worth to be the best area for business in the U.S. For the cultural-minded, the guides set up a private tour of the Dallas Museum of Art. Says Relocation Center President Larry Powers: ''The museum, with its Edouard Manet and Jackson Pollock paintings, made a big impression on the Exxon employees. Many had previously viewed this region as a vast cultural wasteland.'' - M.A.