The casemates along this part of the east wall were gussied up to serve as officers' quarters. When Fort Adams was designed, the intent was for all to live the unadorned casemate life together, officers and enlisted alike, but...officers can apparently be a fussy lot. No less a personage than General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), demanded of Congress that more comfortable quarters for officers be built in America's seacoast defenses, desribing the "most unwholesome casemates" as "miserable places." True dat, Winfield.