Today in history: The president moves to Washington, D.C.

John Adams was the first president to live in the nation's new capital

President Adams was pleased by his decision to move the seat of government from Philadelphia to Washington.
(Image credit: National Archives/Newsmakers/Getty Images)

June 3, 1800: President John Adams moved to Washington; he was the first president to live in the new capital city. But his home — today known as the White House — was still under construction, so the president moved into a tavern at Tunnicliffe's City Hotel on Capitol Hill. According to historian David McCullough, when Adams first arrived in Washington, he wrote to his wife Abigail (who remained behind in Massachusetts) that he liked the soon-to-be-completed President's House and craved living in a permanent home. "Oh! That I could have a home!" he wrote to her. "Rolling, rolling, rolling, till I am very nearly rolling into the bosom of Mother Earth." On Nov. 1, Adams finally moved into his official residence.

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