page_title: President's Dining Room
section_title: Lincoln Bedroom
hierarchical_section_title: President's Dining Room / Early history of the room / Lincoln Bedroom
caption_attribution_description: English: The Lincoln Bedroom of the White House in Washington, D.C., in 1947. This room was an unnamed bedroom suite from the time of its completion in 1809 until 1860, when it was named the Prince of Wales Room. It was renamed the Lincoln Bedroom in 1929, a name it retained until the bedroom suite was removed in 1961 and the space transformed into the Family Kitchen and the President's Dining Room.
context_page_description: The President's Dining Room is a dining room located in the northwest corner of the second floor of the White House. It is located directly above the Family Dining Room on the State Floor and looks out upon the North Lawn. The Dining Room is adjacent to the Family Kitchen, a small kitchen designed for use by the First Family, and served by a dumbwaiter connected to the main kitchen on the ground floor.
  The space was originally occupied by a bedroom suite known as the Prince of Wales Room. From 1929 to 1948, this suite was known as the Lincoln Bedroom. The bedroom suite was structurally changed in 1961 to create a dining room and kitchen in the First Family's residence.
context_section_description: After the death of Calvin Coolidge, Jr. in July 1924, the bedroom suite was unoccupied for some years. In 1929, the Coolidges moved the "Lincoln Bed" into the bedroom suite and formally renamed it the Lincoln Bedroom. This large, four-poster bed had been purchased by Mary Todd Lincoln in 1861 and placed in the Prince of Wales Room. Although there is no evidence Abraham Lincoln ever slept in it, it subsequently became known as the Lincoln Bed. It had moved to several other rooms (and even placed in storage) in the intervening years, but now was restored to its original setting.
  The Lincoln Bedroom was used as a guest bedroom until the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration, when it was occupied by Lorena Hickok (journalist and aide to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt). After Roosevelt's death in 1945, it became the bedroom of Margaret Truman, daughter of President Harry S. Truman.
  Major architectural changes were made to the Lincoln Bedroom when the White House was gutted and renovated in 1952. In the smaller eastern chamber, the bathroom was removed, the stairs were widened, and the stairs moved into the middle of the space (which allowed an enclosed storage space to be created south of the stairs). The passage from the eastern chamber to the bedroom was closed as well. The 1952 reconstruction turned the bedroom into a mirror image of the president's bedroom across the Center Hall. The bedroom's south wall was made convex, which created a walled-off dead space in the room's southeast corner.  The southwest corner now became storage space accessible from the dressing room. After the reconstruction, Margaret Truman continued to use it as her bedroom. In 1953, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower turned it from a bedroom into a sitting room for her mother, Elivera "Minnie" Doud.
caption: Lincoln Bedroom in 1947.
exif: {}