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The Blue Room.—It is in this famous apartment that the President receives his guests upon state occasions. The room is considered the handsomest in the house in point of decoration, and also in its beautiful proportions. The floor is a fine, highly polished parquetry, and the walls are covered with a heavy steel-blue silk with yellow embroideries at the ceiling and wainscot. In the pattern of this embroidery and in the decoration of the ceiling and the window hangings the star is used with graceful effect. Each of the three windows is surmounted by a golden eagle. A feature of the room is the fine marble mantel with its supports representing sheaves of arrows tipped with gold bronze. When receiving in the Blue Room, the presidential party stands in front of the windows, but formerly they occupied the north end of the room. A heavy rope of silk encloses a passageway for the procession of guests, who must pass from the Red Room into the presence of the host and thence into the Green Room. This change is one of the many that were brought about by the rearrangement of the entire premises. During the administration of John Adams, the Blue Room was used as a sort of vestibule, its convenient location making it available for this purpose.