While Monday’s inauguration ceremony for President-elect Donald Trump is set to break with tradition and take place inside the Capitol due to dangerously low temperatures, it’s not the first presidential swearing in to take place in an unusual place — one president was even sworn in aboard a plane.
The first inaugurations in U.S. history didn’t happen in Washington, D.C. President George Washington was sworn in for his first term on April 27, 1789, on a balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, which was serving as the temporary capital of the U.S., according to the Library of Congress. He was sworn in for his second term at the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia.
The first inauguration in Washington, D.C.
John Adams was also sworn in as president in Philadelphia. It wasn’t until Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration that the swearing in ceremony was moved to Washington, D.C. Jefferson took the oath of office inside the U.S. Capitol in 1801.
“Wanting to get away from pomp and circumstance associated with aristocracy, he simply walked the few blocks from his boarding house to the Senate, where he was sworn in by Justice John Marshall,” according to the National Park Service. “When it was over, he simply walked back. Returning to the boarding house late for dinner, Jefferson took one of the only remaining seats at the far end of the table. Given the occasion, someone offered him a better seat near the fireplace. Staying true to his egalitarian platform, Jefferson refused.”
Being sworn in outside Washington
While most inauguration ceremonies in the years since have taken place in Washington, not all of them have happened there.
After President James Garfield was shot in 1881, then-Vice President Chester A. Arthur took the oath of office in New York City at his private residence shortly after Garfield’s death.
President Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in following the assassination of President William McKinley, who was shot on Sept. 6, 1901. McKinley was expected to recover, so Roosevelt, then vice president, went camping in the Adirondacks. Roosevelt rushed to Buffalo, New York, when he heard that McKinley was not expected to survive. He was sworn in as president on Sept. 14, 1901 at the Ansley Wilcox residence in Buffalo.
After President Warren G. Harding’s unexpected August 1923 death following an apparent heart attack, President Calvin Coolidge was sworn in at the Coolidge family home in Plymouth Notch, Vermont.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson was sworn in aboard Air Force One at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was the first time a woman administered the oath of office. It was also the first and and only time a president took the oath of office on an airplane.
Inside the Capitol or outside, east or west
Jefferson brought the inauguration to Washington, but his ceremony took place inside. President Andrew Jackson in 1829 became the first president whose inauguration was held outside on the Capitol’s east portico. From Jackson’s inauguration until President Jimmy Carter’s in 1977, the ceremony largely took place outdoors in front of the Capitol’s east portico, according to the Library of Congress.
The inauguration was held in March until Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s second inauguration in 1937, so the threat of freezing cold temperatures were not as dire. But in 1841, William Henry Harrison’s inauguration was held on a bitterly cold day and he delivered the longest speech to date — and he died one month later of pneumonia.
President William Taft in 1909, amid heavy snow and strong winds, was sworn in at the Senate Chamber of the U.S. Capitol, although the parade still place outside.
President Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981 was the first to happen on the west front of the Capitol, which has been the customary site in the years since. His inauguration for his second term, however, happened inside. Wind chills made it feel below zero on that day in 1985, so Reagan took the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda.
