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.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

"In the 19th century, the average person would know a wide variety of dances," says Richard Powers, a dance historian at Stanford University. Waltzes, polkas, longways country dances, the lancers' quadrille -- everybody knew all of them, and had the chance to show them off at least once a month, if not at a formal ball, then at a private party or dance hall.

Dance lessons were, in fact, one of the few acceptable methods of social climbing: Tailors or tutors could enroll their kids in the same dancing schools as rich landowners in the hopes of securing future party invitations or even making a good marriage match.

Woodrow Wilson shook up the ball tradition when he decreed in 1913 that he would not have one. He thought it was too frivolous for a serious occasion. His wife had her own reasons: "I cannot bear to think of a ball with modern dances at Woodrow's inauguration," Ellen Wilson told reporters. The quadrille was being replaced with the foxtrot; it was all very scandalous.

Warren Harding also canceled-- the country was in a recession, after all -- and it seemed that the ball might have taken its last spin.

But Washingtonians had grown to love the century-old event, and they came up with an inspired work-around: privatization.

Those who could afford to would hold their own ball and give the proceeds to charity.

So from Harding's time through Franklin D. Roosevelt's, the inaugural ball became several events around the city, all for a good cause. So far, so good.

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The whole thing started to go all wrong, prospective ballgoer, in the '50s, that decade of Kinsey, Elvis and Ike. It wasn't his fault; he and Mamie loved to dance.

The maelstrom of occurrences: