Where was George Washington inaugurated as the first United States president?

George Washington was inaugurated as the first United States president at Federal Hall.

The ceremony took place on April 30, 1789, in New York City, which was then the nation’s capital. Washington took the presidential oath on the second-floor balcony of Federal Hall before a large public crowd. Robert R. Livingston, the chancellor of New York, administered the oath.

Federal Hall stood on Wall Street and served as the meeting place of the first Congress under the Constitution. Washington delivered his first inaugural address afterward in the Senate chamber. The ceremony marked the formal beginning of the executive branch under the new constitutional government.

The building no longer survives in its original form. The Federal Hall National Memorial now occupies the site. The White House was not yet the presidential residence, and Washington did not take the oath at Independence Hall, though Philadelphia’s State House had been the setting for the Constitutional Convention.