The roommates say their tub troubles did not end when the House finally installed a showerhead.

“It was horrible,” Stromberg says. “There was no pressure and the water just dripped onto us.”

Stromberg says he went to Dickson Brothers’ Hardware Store in the Square and purchased both a showerhead to fix the water pressure problem and a shower curtain.

But its residents forgive the room its shortcomings.

“It’s quite a change, we’re very lucky,” Donahue says. “It is very beautiful and special.”

Adams House Master Sean Palfrey said the room was opened for the first time to students because of a space crunch in the House and because Agee Professor of Social Ethics Robert Coles had moved out.

“In the old style, professors frequently had offices in Houses and used them for office hours or seminar,” Palfrey said.

The room was the last in Adams House to be used by a professor as an office, and Palfrey decided to make it a student residence this summer.

Juniors and seniors were unable to apply for the room because they had already completed the lottery process by the time the room was made available.

So the housing tutor circulated an e-mail to all rising sophomores over the summer and asked that all interested rooming groups reply to participate in a lottery.

Palfrey says the sophomores currently living in the suite may also gain the distinction of being the last students to occupy the room.

“We are considering preserving the room as a Roosevelt room for the use of Adams affiliates or visiting scholars,” Palfrey says.

Palfrey is himself a part of the Roosevelt family and has taken special interest in the FDR suite. Theodore Roosevelt, Class of 1880, is Palfrey’s great-grandfather.

Palfrey owns a great deal of Roosevelt memorabilia.

“Teddy’s crib is in the third floor of my residence. I slept in it as a child, my children slept in it,” he says, “and hopefully my children’s children will sleep in this heirloom.”

—Staff writer Maria S. Pedroza can be reached at mpedroza@fas.harvard.edu.