George Washington held the first New Year’s Day Reception at the President’s House in New York.
New York: 1790
The weather was unseasonably balmy January 1, 1790. The doors and windows were opened wide and throngs of well wishers and visitors poured into the house on Cherry Street, which had become entirely too small to accommodate the social needs of both President and First Lady Washington. They would move soon.
But it was the “Second” Lady, Abigail Adams, who not only witnessed this first “public” open-to-everybody reception, but wrote about it in a letter to her sister.
It was an old Dutch custom.
Flashback to 1621
New York, originally part of New Netherlands, was first settled by the Dutch West India Company circa 1621, primarily to capitalize on the fur trade. At the time it was colonized, it occupied what is now parts of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and even parts of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The New Netherlands grew and prospered. By the 1650s, Manhattan Island in “New Amsterdam” was a major port on the American East Coast, with a population of around 2000. Trading vessels came regularly.
Less known in American history, the English and the Dutch were spending a huge chunk of the seventeenth century at war. Not here. Overseas. The tiny colonies in North America were basically commercial collateral damage.
In 1650, the English trounced the Dutch in the Second Anglo-Dutch War (over there) and in 1664, Fort Amsterdam (over here) became a British possession.
The Dutch (over there) retook Manhattan in 1673, but that didn’t last long, and they re-ceded it back to the English about a year later, after the Third Anglo-Dutch War. By that time, New Amsterdam’s population was nearly 9000. Location, location.
But after the “Glorious Revolution” in England (1688) William, the Protestant Dutch Prince of Orange, and his wife Mary, a Protestant English Princess (heir to the English throne), were invited to become “William and Mary” the co-monarchs of England. That worked out pretty well all the way around.
There weren’t any more Anglo-Dutch wars, and New Amsterdam became New York. Permanently.
But by that time, there was a significantly potent Dutch presence in the area. They had become wealthy, prominent, had large tracts of property, and a very strong Dutch tradition. Enough to provide a new country with three future presidents: Martin Van Buren, and both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Back to New York and Cherry Street, 1790
Abigail Adams wrote to her sister about the fashion of “New Year’s Cooky. This & Cherry Bounce as it is called in the old Dutch custom of treating their Friends upon the return of every New Year.”
She further commented that the common people, who are ever ready to abuse Liberty on this day… excuse it “by saying it was New Year, & every body was joyous then…”
It seemed a harmless enough custom to permit the common people, so long as they were well-behaved and properly dressed (the Washingtons were picky about this) to come to the President’s House (wherever he lived), and if they were willing to stand in line and wait their turn, he and the First Lady would greet them with a handshake or a nod or slight bow, and wish them a Happy New Year. And maybe a “cooky.”
George Washington was well aware of the need to “be seen” and “press the flesh” as it were. Neither was particularly palatable to him. Personally aloof by nature, he still knew it was important. He also knew that other than some engravings of his likeness, very few Americans had any idea of what he looked like. Or what his voice was like. He was only a name and a reputation. But he began to note, to his satisfaction, the large and growing numbers of people who attended his and Martha’s levees each week.
Later that year, he again opened his Presidential house for the Fourth of July. People could stand in line to shake his hand again and receive a few words of pleasant greeting. But this time, President Washington was living in a mansion on Broadway, not far from Trinity Church. It was much larger and could accommodate many more people.
The Tradition Continues
President and Mrs. Washington only lived in New York for two years. Congress had arranged to build a brand new capital city (which they decided to call Washington) on a few square miles of land donated by Virginia and Maryland. It was a compromise between “north and south.” Naturally it would take several years for an entirely new city to be built.
So in the interim, it was decided that the “capital” would move back to Philadelphia, still the largest and most cosmopolitan city in the country. (New York was nipping at its heels, and Baltimore was a distant third.) But every January 1, Washington’s rented house in Philadelphia was open to the public for a New Year’s Day reception.
It was also decided that Philly would remain the capital for eight more years, giving sufficient time for the District of Columbia (thus Washington D.C.) to be adequately planned and somewhat paved, with a) a building to accommodate the Legislature, i.e. the Capitol; and b) an Executive Mansion (later known as the White House) to get it started.
George Washington was on hand to lay the cornerstone, and even in his retirement, rode over from Mount Vernon periodically to see how it was progressing. Then he died in December 1799. He never got to actually see the city that would bear his name.
Second President John Adams was the first POTUS to live in the White House. Only weeks after he moved in during the fall of 1800, he opened the cold, damp and unfinished Executive Mansion for a public reception, thereby continuing the old Dutch New Year’s Day tradition. And it was a tradition for the next 130 years. (Not sure about the cooky.)
Sources:
Fraser, Flora – The Washingtons: George and Martha – Alfred A. Knopf, 2015
Mitchell, Stewart (ed.) NEW LETTERS OF ABIGAIL ADAMS – Houghton Mifflin Co., 1947.)
www.https://whitehousehistory.org/john-and-abigail-adams-a-tradition-begins
Presidential History Blog 
Feather, you never cease to amaze me at your ability to seek and find unusual facts and connections that bring history to life. Your writing about the presidents and first wives from our past is invariably respectful and based on good sources, but entertaining as well.