Lincoln Bedroom

Lincoln (Never) Slept Here

The Lincoln Bedroom is a bedroom on the second floor of the White House, part of a suite of rooms that includes the Lincoln Sitting Room and Lincoln Bath. Named for Abraham Lincoln and used by him as an office, this room is known for alleged ghost sightings. The room is best known as a guest room used by presidents to reward friends and political supporters.

The room has been furnished in Victorian style since the Truman renovation. Some of the furniture was used by the Lincoln administration (but pre-date it), including the sofa and three matching chairs, two slipper chairs, and four of Lincoln's Cabinet chairs. The central feature of the room is the Lincoln bed, a nearly 8-foot by 6-foot rosewood bed with an enormous headboard. The bed was probably never used by President Lincoln, although several later presidents have used it.

A holograph copy of the Gettysburg Address is displayed on the desk. This copy is the only one of five that is signed, dated, and titled by Lincoln.

Before the construction of the West Wing in 1902, this room was used as either an office or a meeting room for the president's Cabinet. Anddrew Jackson installed a Russia stove in small sandbox, which he retrofitted to the closed fireplace, but the fireplace was later reopened. When the president's staff was moved to the new West Wing, this room became the "Blue Suite" bedroom where, for example, Margaret Wilson lived. Lou Hoover turned it into a parlor and filled it with Lincoln furnishings. When the White House was gutted and rebuilt during the Truman administration, this room was rebuilt and rededicated to Abraham Lincoln.

Adapted from America's First Families: Chapter 3, A Home Within a Symbol:

During the months when First Lady Nellie Taft was recuperating from a stroke, her visiting sisters Eleanor Moore, Jennie Anderson, and Maria Herron lived in the "Blue Suite" across the hall from the Rose Suite. Intermittently during the Wilson tenure, this was the home of Margaret Wilson, the daughter who remained unmarried. When Herbert Hoover decided to move his private office here, the "Blue Suite" became the "Lincoln Study." It was again a bedroom under FDR -- where adviser Harry Hopkins and his wartime bride Louise lived -- but the Lincoln bed was not yet in place.

Finally, in 1945, under Harry Truman's direction the Lincoln bed and accompanying furniture were moved in, and the "Lincoln Study" became the Lincoln Bedroom.

In 2004, the White House announced that it would redecorate the Lincoln Bedroom to freshen it up and even restore the bed with a canopy just like the original put away decades ago.

Adapted from the Washington Post:

But, in the first sweeping rethink of the Lincoln Bedroom in at least three decades, the timid lemon walls, celery-green curtains and pale floral carpet are being banished in favor of a blast of Victorian bliss.

Heady hues of emerald green, golden yellow and deep purple will carpet the floor, drape the windows and envelop the massive, six-foot-tall carved headboard. Walls will be papered in a restrained palette of cream tones -- a nod to contemporary tastes -- but the pattern has been derived from the Victorian Age. Two elaborate cornices such as might have topped windows in Lincoln's day have been carved and sent to the gilders. An opulent white marble mantel was commissioned to better complement a rococo-style mirror installed last summer.

The pièce de résistance, both decoratively and symbolically, will be a carved bed canopy in the shape of a crown. It too has been sent for gilding. When affixed to the ceiling, the crown will support yards of regal purple satin over white lace, both trailing to the floor.