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.