First inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Noon on the East Portico

The listing carries only the year. The ceremony has a date: 4 March 1933, when Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes administered the presidential oath to Franklin D. Roosevelt on the East Portico of the US Capitol, transferring the office from Herbert Hoover.

Roosevelt used his family’s Dutch-language Bible, printed in 1686 and opened to 1 Corinthians 13. John Nance Garner was sworn in separately as vice president by the outgoing vice president, Charles Curtis, in the Senate Chamber.

The estimated temperature at noon was 42°F.

The address, and what it asked for

Roosevelt used the inaugural address to confront the banking and economic emergency directly, declaring that ‘the only thing we have to fear is fear itself’ and demanding immediate action.

He also said he would seek broad executive power if normal congressional action proved inadequate.

Two days to the bank holiday

Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt had begun the day at a morning service at St. John’s Church, starting a modern inaugural custom. Eleanor Roosevelt then canceled the planned White House luncheon after the death of Senator Thomas J. Walsh, Roosevelt’s intended attorney general.

The New Deal legislation the event is usually remembered for came later: on 5 March the president called Congress into special session, and early on 6 March he proclaimed a nationwide bank holiday running through 9 March.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, often folded into accounts of these first weeks, was not created until 1934.