The ample and airy space beneath the high portico on the south side was used for domestic offices and servants’ quarters, thus greatly increasing the capacity of the house, and the construction of the very convenient executive office building, reached by a covered, or cloistered passage from the White House basement, was carried out on lines so like in style and appearance to the north portico, so low and classically simple, that it detracts nothing from the general effect and interferes in no way with the dignified outlines of the home of the Nation’s Chief Magistrate.

During the reconstruction the President and Mrs. Roosevelt lived either at Oyster Bay or in a house a few steps from the White House on Lafayette Square. Mr. McKim frequently consulted Mrs. Roosevelt as to interior changes and many of her views were adopted, so that the woman’s side of the new White House was well looked after.

The work took longer and cost more than was expected and this elicited much criticism of the architect as well as of the architectural result. His aim had been to make as little outward change in the main lines as possible and yet to make as great a change as space would permit in interior accommodation. Considering what he had to accomplish his success was remarkable. But the Philistines among the Congressmen and Senators, who don’t like architects anyway, found much to complain of. In their daily visits to the President they did not, by Mr. McKim’s plan, reach him through the historic front entrance, supported by the great, white pillars, but they were relegated to a business office, simply and conveniently equipped, and it offended the sense of due proportion of some of them as to who were the real power in the government, the legislative representatives calling on business or the social guests of the President.