St. Patrick's Day in New York City calls to mind the Fifth Avenue parade, celebrating its 225th anniversary this year; the town's 2,000 Irish pubs packed with drunken revelers; and grown men dressed as leprechauns.
But the holiday on March 17 is also, unbeknownst to many New Yorkers, a significant wedding anniversary.
On March 17, 1905, future U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and future first lady Eleanor Roosevelt tied the knot in an afternoon ceremony at the residence of the bride's godmother and cousin on the Upper East Side, two interconnected houses at 6-8 E. 76th St. (Yes, Eleanor's maiden name was Roosevelt; the fiancés were fifth cousins once removed.)
Franklin's longtime friend and Harvard roommate, Lathrop Brown, served as his best man. His former boarding school headmaster, Endicott Peabody, officiated at the wedding, signing the certificate below.
Credit: NYC Department of Records/Municipal Archives
Eleanor's uncle and then-president Theodore Roosevelt gave the orphaned bride away in front of relatives and a few close friends.
The young couple, betrothed for 16 months, had actually chosen the March 17 date because they knew the president would be in town for the St. Patrick's Day parade and dinner.
"Everybody was petrified that for fear Uncle Ted wouldn't be able to get through the parade to the house, but he was on time," Eleanor told the Pittsburg Press shortly before her 29th wedding anniversary.
Eleanor, who'd been teased as a child for her plain appearance, wore a "white satin princess robe, flounced and draped with old point lace, and with a white satin court train," the New York Times reported. Her "point lace veil was caught with orange blossoms and a diamond crescent," and she carried a bouquet of lilies of the valley.
Eleanor Roosevelt in her bridal gown a few months prior to the wedding (Credit: Franklin D. Roosevelt Library)
Palms and pink roses decorated the altar erected for the proceedings, the latter symbolizing the "field of roses" in the Roosevelt family name.
The married sweethearts wouldn't depart for a three-month-long honeymoon in Europe until that summer, returning before Franklin began his second year at Columbia Law School.
Their four decades together would be anything but easy, since it was complicated by the paralysis of Franklin's legs after he contracted polio in 1921 and the couple's extramarital romantic attachments. But they'd fight for political and social change as husband and wife until F.D.R. died in 1945.
