The state capitol where Lincoln first served was unprepossessing. A leader of the senate, William Lee Davidson Ewing, called the decade-old building—with its falling plaster, sagging floors, cracked and bulging walls, and crumbling bricks—“manifestly inconvenient for the transaction of public business.” The plainness of both the architecture and the furnishings made it resemble a Quaker meetinghouse. Members sat on hard benches instead of cushioned chairs. The speaker of the House of Representatives presided from an armchair resting on a small platform; before him was a primitive desk made by placing a board on some sticks. Built hurriedly on low, wet ground, this statehouse was replaced in 1836 with a more substantial, if no more attractive, edifice.
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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