Dropping The Ball

Gallery

A History of Inaugural Balls

It's not just the ball gowns that have evolved since the first presidential inaugural gala in 1809.

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"The ball became a symbol of a new era," says Dolley Madison biographer Catherine Allgor. "It said there was a new sheriff in town, and that sheriff was Dolley Madison." The ball reassured the fledgling (and still British-influenced) country that it had the "right" kind of people in leadership positions. Americans began calling Mrs. Madison "Queen Dolley."

She threw a really great party. Anyone with $4 (about $50 today) could attend, and would be treated to lemonade and coffee, a late supper, candies and this drink called "chocolate," new to the young nation.

The Marine Band played, guests did minuets and waltzes, the Madisons stayed late, and such a fabulous time was had by all that James Monroe kept the idea for his 1817 inauguration. So did John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, who decided to double his pleasure with two balls. Three balls were hosted for William Henry Harrison. He attended all of them, then died a month later from pneumonia caught during the inaugural festivities. For a while after that, presidents scaled back to just one.

With each inauguration, the federal government fine-tuned its famous love of "process," of committees and subcommittees. Enter the Presidential Inaugural Committee, and its departments of Programmes, Hall and Promenade, and Public Comfort -- dedicated, absurdly, to actually making travel and lodging for out-of-towners affordable.

A sample PIC agenda from 1881: "Appointment of Persons to Have Charge of the Hat Boxes."

Other agendas asserted themselves early: At one 19th-century meeting, members proposed such ideas as charging female guests double because of their large dresses. At another, the chair of the civic organizations committee received special thanks for dealing with the "women suffragists" who "have greatly added to the troubles of the inaugural committee."

Aside from the pesky females, with their big mouths and bigger skirts, there were other mishaps (two words about Ulysses S. Grant's icy ball: frozen canaries). The sites were almost always too crowded, but the parties seemed magnificent regardless. For Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration, the list of desserts takes up its own paragraph ("tarte a la Nelson, tart a la Orleans, tarte a la Portuguese, tarte a la Vienne . . ."), and a New York reporter praised the event for sporting "the best arrangement of the ladies' retiring-rooms and gentleman's cloak room that we have ever seen."

So far, so good.

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Today we think of balls as Disney extravaganzas, but without the glass slipper.

But back then, balls were just big excuses for dancing: formal, choreographed, partnered dancing.