Happy Birthday, Abe

Newsweek, February, 2007 by Michael Beschloss

A hundred and ninety-eight years after Abraham Lincoln's birth, the White House's Lincoln Bedroom finally looks like a room the great man would recognize.

Until recently, Lincoln furniture and a copy of the Gettysburg Address were displayed against the pale walls, curtains and carpet of a 1950s city hotel--not the vivid golds and purples, heavy fabrics and large patterns of Lincoln's era.

One reason for this mild historical fib was to focus attention on the chamber's historic objects. Another: midcentury Americans disdained Victorian décor, which they equated with the horrific house in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho."

But now, under First Lady Laura Bush and White House curator Bill Allman, the bedroom has been impressively restored to the time of the Civil...

Read the full article with a Free Trial at MyWire.

Premium Content Partnership | MyWire provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.