1985 was the last time an inauguration was indoors. Ronald and Nancy Reagan felt they had no choice

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This article was published 18/01/2025 (327 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Ronald and Nancy Reagan were disappointed.

That’s what White House press secretary Larry Speakes told reporters on Jan. 18, 1985, after the Republican president and first lady decided to hold his second inauguration indoors because of an unusually cold weather forecast.

“They really felt they had no choice,” Speakes said two days before the ceremony, according to archived transcripts of press briefings housed at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in California.

President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to take the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda on Monday, when below-freezing temperatures are again expected, recalls the last time cold weather prompted a similar decision.

The transcripts from 1985 shed light on the Reagans’ considerations.

“There was high-level medical and military consultation and it was just a very serious problem for health and safety,” Speakes said, according to transcripts provided Friday by the Reagan library. “We would have had probably some very serious problems for some of the participants.”

Like what, reporters asked.

For a day when the temperature reached 7 degrees Fahrenheit (-14 Celsius) in Washington, “the medical people told them that exposed areas would freeze in less than five minutes, with wind-chill factors like this,” Speakes said.

Speakes waved off concerns for Reagan’s own health as a man taking office a second time at nearly 74 years old. (Trump turned 78 in June and will become the oldest person to start a presidential term. President Joe Biden, who will be in the audience while Trump takes the oath of office, is 82.)

Reagan’s box on the west steps of the Capitol would have been heated, so “no, I don’t think that was ever voiced to the president,” Speakes said.

It was the thousands of people participating in the parade, standing along the parade route and huddled on the National Mall who, Speakes said, concerned the president and first lady more.

“The Reagans looked at it … knowing parade participants might be out there for four hours, if not longer,” he said. “So, it was just obvious, knowing that — what the medical people told them — that they would have had severe frostbite, if not some conditions that could have been worse.”