On November 1, 1800, President John Adams became the first president to take up residence in the President’s House in Washington, D.C. The mansion was unfinished but habitable—a distinction that offered limited comfort. Writing to his wife, Abigail, the following day, Adams reported that he had dined and slept there, then added: “And now we wish for your Company.”
After joining him, Abigail offered a less reassuring assessment. In a November 21 letter to her sister, she complained that “not one room or chamber is finished of the whole.” Fires had to be kept burning throughout the house to keep its occupants from sleeping in “wet & damp places.” The new presidential residence was ready for its historic role, but hardly ready for comfortable domestic life.
Yet Adams’s November 2 letter contained more than a report on his new surroundings. Before closing, he wrote: “I pray Heaven to bestow the best of Blessings on this House and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise Men ever rule under this roof.” In 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered those words carved into the State Dining Room mantel. What began as a private wish to his wife became a public statement of the character Adams hoped the presidency would demand.
