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Welcome to The Mary Todd Lincoln Bedroom
"Chains, Buckets and a variety of Cotton Scraps" cluttered Room 17 of the White House
basement in February 1801, according to the first official Executive Mansion Inventory.
With the passage of time, the room would come to serve informally as a confinement chamber
for First Ladies and female offspring to weather their pungent Monthlies - out of sight of God-fearing
menfolk. Not until Abraham Lincoln's renovation of 1862, accompanied by the installation
of a clean-burning coal furnace, was this uniquely subterranean bedroom officially designated
the "First Lady's Time Out Room." In 1933, it was remodeled
by Eleanor Roosevelt as a ladies-only reception/slumber party room, and in
1974 a committee was appointed to select furnishings representative of the
full spectrum of American repression, rehabilitation and restraint devices
for the use of the President, his family, and his staff. This wide-ranging
collection is still being augmented today with the help of a generous grant from the Pfizer
Pharmaceutical Corporation.
As seen above, the Bedroom is furnished in the style of the high Miltown period (1951-1959),
with most of the pieces attributed to designer Hoffmann-La Roche. It is more casual
and considerably less dangerously sharp-edged than the rooms of the
State Floor, and was often used for the involuntary storage of excessively vocal or
prescription-engorged First Ladies during important teas and summits held
elsewhere in the building. The soft gray and rose tones of the paneling are
complemented by a Luvox-hued carpet of the mid-20th century. The gilded wood
chandelier with painted red band emanates a gentle, anesthetizing glow and
was made in 1967 in the popular Diazepam style. The quilted wall padding
designed for the Ford administration by craftsman Eli Lilly is not only
elegant, but also functional enough to muffle the unseemly sounds of a First
Lady in a period of non-compliant tea-totaling - not to mention sufficiently sturdy
to withstand the Lee Press-Ons of said spouse during a profanity-belching spate of the delirium tremens.
On the west wall is a portrait of the room's most frequent denizen and namesake,
Mary Todd Lincoln, who is also represented in the room's
furnishings by a personalized dinner bowl from which she would take bland
nourishment after incidents of colorful public behavior.
Lest it seem as if use of the Bedroom was restricted to the fairer sex, it
should be noted that President Clinton was known to encamp in the room for
nights at a time. These sessions, generally at the behest of the First Lady,
usually involved meditation, chastity harnesses, and quiet contemplation of his Executive actions while
seated in the room's signature wooden Saltpétre chair - a decorative addition under the Reagan administration.
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