It was the glittering ball that Dolley Madison held in 1809 at the inauguration of her husband, James — the first inaugural ball held in the new capital, Washington — that helped set the standard for making inaugurations into social events.

Two decades later, President Andrew Jackson allowed an estimated 20,000 people to attend a public reception tied to his inauguration.

Throngs also marred the ball that President Ulysses S.

And at President Theodore Roosevelt’s second inauguration, the parade playlist featured “There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” and among the marchers were cowboys; Native Americans, including Geronimo; delegations from Puerto Rico and the Philippines; and Harvard undergrads.

“If there was any considerable type of American life not represented in the three hours and a half of effervescent enthusiasm that boiled its way up the avenue,” The Times wrote, “it is not easily remembered.”.

Mann, the historian, said that she viewed the entertainment at Kennedy’s inauguration — featuring Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Leonard Bernstein, Sidney Poitier, Ethel Merman, Harry Belafonte and other huge stars — as a “big moment” that would set the stage for the type of glamorous, multipart inaugural blowouts American have come to expect.

Twenty years later, President Ronald Reagan, a former Hollywood actor, found himself attending no fewer than eight balls, rubbing shoulders with stars like Charlton Heston, as Tony Bennett, Lou Rawls and Ray Charles performed.

Moments witnessed and analyzed by New York Times correspondents since the 1853 inauguration, the first to take place after the paper was founded.

In the years that followed, most presidents held some type of inaugural concert and leaned on performers to add layers of musical symbolism to their inaugurations.

and Ray Charles for a mega concert at the Lincoln Memorial which, the critic Jon Pareles wrote in The Times, “promised unity through crossover.”.

If the 2001 events honoring the inauguration of President George W.

President Barack Obama attended 10 inaugural balls in 2009, but one stood out: the Neighborhood Ball.

In the run-up to President Trump’s inauguration, the news centered as much on the stars who decided not to perform as those who agreed to.

Welcome Celebration.” The critic Jon Caramanica wrote in The Times that it “veered between jingoism and vaudevillian fluff and largely ignored the contribution of African-Americans to popular music (which is to say, almost all of popular music).”