Federal Hall was the building where George Washington took the presidential oath in 1789.
Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City. Chancellor Robert Livingston administered the oath, and Washington then delivered his inaugural address to the new nation’s first Congress. The event marked the beginning of the executive branch under the Constitution.
The building stood on Wall Street at the site now associated with Federal Hall National Memorial. It had previously served as New York’s City Hall and was remodeled for the first federal government. Congress met there, and the Bill of Rights was introduced in the building in 1789.
The original structure was demolished in 1812. The present Federal Hall National Memorial, completed in 1842 as a customs house, is a different building on the same site. This distinction causes a common mix-up: Washington’s inauguration occurred at the original Federal Hall, not at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence had been adopted and the Constitution drafted.