The President's House - Washington and Adams

Presidents George Washington and John Adams lived and worked on this site from 1790 to 1800, establishing traditions and protocols that later presidents continued to follow. Washington moved into the President's House in November 1790 and remained until March 1797, calling the three-story brick mansion the best single house in the city. His household numbered about thirty people, including family members, personal staff and their families, about fifteen white servants, and at least nine enslaved Africans, while he conducted executive business from a small second-floor office. During his years there, the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, were added to the Constitution, he approved a national banking system, and he proclaimed a policy of American neutrality in European affairs. Slavery troubled Washington during his Philadelphia years; although he had privately begun to doubt the institution, he signed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which required the return of enslaved persons to their owners and made aiding their escape a crime. He also secretly rotated enslaved people he had brought to Philadelphia out of Pennsylvania before six months of residence so they could not claim freedom under the state's Gradual Abolition Law of 1780. Washington later decided to free his slaves, but under his will that freedom came only after both he and his wife had died, and it did not include Martha's dower slaves, who belonged legally to her family's estate. John Adams and Abigail Adams moved into the house in March 1797. Adams, who never owned slaves, lived with frugality and simple tastes, and the house became more sedate than it had been during Washington's presidency, with large functions occurring only rarely. While Adams lived there, he governed a deeply divided and increasingly partisan nation as the Republican Party challenged the Federalists, faced the diplomatic crisis known as the XYZ Affair, and saw the ratification of the 11th Amendment, the creation of a national Navy, and the establishment of the Mississippi Territory, while also drawing strong criticism for signing the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Adams left in May 1800 and moved into the White House in Washington, D.C.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania · United States