During the presidency, George Washington maintained a wardrobe with a variety of suits for different occasions, including several brown suits. This brown broadcloth coat, with its formal, single-breasted cut, may have been worn by him for his first inauguration as president of the United States on April 30, 1789. First-hand accounts noted that Washington wore a plain brown suit of American-made broadcloth, but they did not comment on the style. The style of the single-breasted coat corresponds to that which Washington preferred in his official depictions as a head of state, and the treatment of the coat by later generations also suggests that it was believed to be a significant witness to history. One full tail of the coat, all of the buttons, and the silk lining were intentionally cut and removed from the coat in the nineteenth-century.