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Welcome Home:
The :Lincoln's new home dwarfed anything they had previously known. Indeed, their entire Springfield house would have fit comfortably in the East Room. Size wasn't everything, however. A third of the mansion's 31 rooms were located in a rat-infested basement. The first floor was used for public entertaining, while presidential work spaces occupied much of the second floor (there would be no West Wing or Oval Office until the next century).
Private Quarters:
The Lincolns had just seven rooms for their private quarters. The president seemed perfectly content with his new surroundings, despite the stench of the nearby canal, which his secretary John Nicolay likened to "the ghosts of twenty thousand drowned cats." The only physical change Lincoln made was a partition dividing the public reception room outside his office. This enabled a harassed chief executive to slip unobserved between the office and nearby family quarters without running the usual gauntlet of office seekers. |