Springfield’s business structures were arranged haphazardly and slapped together in the cheapest possible manner. Both its hotels and livery stables were few in number, small, badly managed, and expensive. Its stores were meagerly stocked, and the concert hall was so dirty and shabby that the celebrated soprano Adelina Patti refused to sing there once she had taken the stage and beheld its appearance. The capitol was considered an eyesore, with an interior that impressed one visitor as “the most shabby, forlorn, dirty, dilapidated specimen of a public edifice which we have ever seen.”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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