1st Presidential Inauguration

You could say with great assurance that George Washington stepped here, "here" being the second-floor balcony of what is now the Federal Hall National Memorial at 26 Wall Street. Washington was inaugurated as the first president there on April 30, 1789, after Peter L'Enfant renovated New York's old City Hall into the nation's first Capitol. 

In keeping with the city's early commitment to recycling, the century-old building was razed in 1812 and sold for $450 in scrap after Congress decamped first for Philadelphia and then for the swampy banks of the Potomac. (The first City Hall had stood at 71 Pearl Street and was sold in 1699.) Among the few relics salvaged from the second City Hall was a brownstone slab, nine feet by four feet, on which Washington stood during the ceremony. (It is on display at Federal Hall, along with a portion of the original balcony railing and the Bible with which he took the oath of office.)

The inauguration marked Washington's triumphal return to New York. When the city was the capital under the Articles of Confederation (from 1785 to 1788), he dubbed New York "the Seat of the Empire"-which is believed to be the source of its nickname, the Empire State.

The city he returned to as president was poised for imperial promise. "One of the great advantages of the Constitution over the Articles of Confederation," Harvard Professor Edward L. Glaeser wrote, "is that the Constitution significantly reduced the barriers to interstate trade. As these barriers fell, the possibility for interstate trade rose and the advantage of a location near the center of the colonies increased." That augured well for the proposed Potomac site that Washington favored. After 1790, New York would no longer be the capital city, the role it played under the Constitution from March 4, 1789 through December 5, 1790. Instead, it would become the city of capital. Historians still debate whether Alexander Hamilton shortchanged the city when he agreed to relocate the capital in the South in exchange for federal assumption of the states' Revolutionary War debt. Columbia's Kenneth T. Jackson, for one, doesn't think so. "New York became the mercantile and financial capital first of the nation and then the world," he said, "and maybe its excitement and vitality derive from the fact that it lacks the boring buildings and boring people who are part of the permanent bureaucracy' James Madison and Thomas Jefferson wanted a Southern capital. Hamilton wanted the new federal government to assume the debts of the states, incurred mostly in the North. After Jefferson ran into Hamilton at Washington's house on Cherry Street in Lower Manhattan, the three Founding Fathers agreed to meet for dinner at Jefferson's home at 57 Maiden Lane. There, they compromised. In July 1790. the Residence Act was passed, followed by the Assumption Act, and the capital decamped for a Southern, racially segregated city after an interim stay in Philadelphia. "When all is done," Abigail Adams wrote prophetically, "it will not be Broadway.
 

Martha Washington was still at Mt. Vernon and was not able to attend. The new President arrived at the Assembly Rooms at 115 Broadway in the company of other American statesmen and their wives. John and Abigail Adams, members of Congress and visiting French and Spanish dignitaries, as well their wives and daughters, joined in the festivities. That evening he danced “two cotillions and a minuet,” with many of New York’s society ladies. Eliza Hamilton, wife of Alexander Hamilton, recorded her impressions of the ball in her memoirs, noting that the president liked to dance the minuet, a dance she thought was suited to his dignity and gravity. Guests were dressed with “consummate taste and elegance” and women were given ivory fans from Paris, according to one contemporary. These fans had Washington’s profile printed on their paper coverings. When Martha arrived in New York ten days later, she was greeted with grand fanfare by New York Society, and yet another ball was held in her honor.