East Sitting Hall

Formal Relaxation

The East Sitting Hall features a large fanlight window and access to the east rooms on the second floor, including the Lincoln Bedroom suite and the Queens' Bedroom suite. Through disguised doors, it also allows access to a closet and a staircase up to the third floor.

Because the East Sitting Hall is situated above the East Room, which has a 22-foot ceiling, access to the East Sitting Hall was originally by way of a small set of stairs from the Stair Landing. During the Truman reconstruction, this area was reduce by the addition of the lavatory and side stair to the third floor and the steps were replaced with a ramp up the center of an arched corridor.

Since the modern Lincoln Bedroom suite and Queens' Bedroom suite were originally offices of the chief executive, this room was once the reception room for those hoping to meet with the president.

Of the room in the time of Tyler, the acclaimed author Charles Dickens wrote:

[W]e went upstairs into another chamber, where were certain visitors, waiting for audiences. At sight of my conductor, a black in plain clothes and yellow slippers who was gliding noiselessly about and whispering messages in the ears of the more impatient, made a sign of recognition, and glided off to announce him. We had previously looked into another chamber fitted all round with a great bare wooden desk or counter [probably the Anteroom, today's Treaty Room], whereon lay piles of newspapers, to which sundry gentlemen were referring. But there were no such means of beguiling the time in this apartment, which was as unpromising and tiresome as any waiting-room....

There were some fifteen or twenty persons in the room. One, a tall, wiry, muscular old man, from the West, sunburnt and swarthy... with a giant umbrella between his knees.... Another, a Kentucky farmer, six-feet-six in height, with his hat on, and his hands under his coattails, leaning against a wall.... A third, an oval-faced, bilious-looking man, with... whiskers and beard shaved down to blue dots... A fourth did nothing but whistle.

We had not waited in this room many minutes, before the black messenger returned, and conducted us into another of smaller dimensions [probably the President's Office, today's Lincoln Bedroom], where, at a business-like table covered with papers, sat the President himself. He looked somewhat worn and anxious, but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and deemanor [sic] he became his station singularly well.