For all the comparisons to Lincoln and Roosevelt and Kennedy, at noon this Inauguration Day there was just Barack Obama, a slender black man in a dark overcoat. He stood in front of a Capitol building that was built partly by slaves.

He looked out at a sea of faces on the National Mall — an estimated 1.8 million of them — and to a nation clouded by war and recession and doubt.

He would have none of the latter. "We have chosen hope over fear," he said, adding that it was time "to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off" and remake the country.

That's when it hit Rita Green, 57, of Gaithersburg, Md., who watched from a prized spot near the West Front of the Capitol. She had registered voters and gone to North Carolina to campaign for Obama, but the idea that he would actually occupy the White House hadn't quite sunk in — until then. "It's official," she suddenly realized. "He made it."

At the White House, outgoing press secretary Dana Perino said, "We're all a little bit sad" that the Bush administration was over.

But in many parts of the USA far from the White House, people were happy — and looking forward to Obama's promise of change: in public housing projects, the auto towns of the Midwest, the Katrina-ravaged neighborhoods of the Gulf Coast and in schools, where for a day students watched history instead of reading about it.

"The whole country is excited," said Colin Powell, the former secretary of State, who himself had entertained thoughts of trying to become the nation's first African-American president.

The streets around the White House had the feel of a state fair, with bunting, white food tents and souvenirs, including Obama masks, needlepoint pillows and incense. People sang and laughed over nothing. Strangers treated each other like old friends.

"We haven't met a stranger today," said Mark Goins, 38, who came from Louisville. "I've never seen anything like it."

When Omar Funchess' white pickup got stuck in a crowd that was waiting to get onto the Mall, he climbed up on the truck bed and led the crowd in call-and-respond cheers.

"Change!" he cried. "We did it!" the crowd replied.

To some, Obama's speech was almost an anti-climax. "I didn't hear many applause triggers or many memorable lines," said William Leuchtenburg, 86, a dean of American political historians, who watched at home in Chapel Hill, N.C.

Paul Boller, author of the history Presidential Inaugurations, deemed the speech good but not great — no rival to Lincoln's second inaugural address, to Kennedy's in 1961 or FDR's in 1933.

"There were no memorable phrases; it won't be recalled in the way Kennedy's was," he predicted.

"My guess is that the event will make it into the textbooks, more than the speech," said Lizabeth Cohen, chair of Harvard's history department and co-author of the high school history textbook The American Pageant.

Leuchtenburg agreed: "It was the occasion that was extraordinary. And the size of that crowd."

Tiffani LoBue of Palm Springs, Calif., was part of it.

"I thought the speech was very optimistic," she said, "and I could see it in the crowd. People were very appreciative of one another; nobody was saying, 'Get out of my space.' People got quiet so everyone could hear."

A nationwide gathering

Across the nation, Obama's inauguration was a community event.

"People wanted to be together to be part of that patchwork," Cohen said. They gathered in churches and on campuses, in theaters and restaurants, in Times Square in New York City and at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta.

About 70 people jammed into tiny Bird & Beckett Books in San Francisco, where borrowed big-screen TVs lined a wall. A table at the entrance was covered with homemade baked goods brought in by customers who watched the inauguration together.

Those watching at home included Ann Nixon Cooper, the 107-year-old black woman whom Obama praised in his election-night victory speech in Chicago, and Peggy Wallace Kennedy, daughter of George Wallace, the white Alabama governor who once vowed "Segregation forever!"

Cooper watched in Atlanta, where she'd said she had one thing left to do in life: "See a black president."

Kennedy, 58, of Montgomery, Ala., voted for Obama and was thrilled to see him installed. "It's a new day," she said. "He's going to bring healing to this nation."

In New Orleans, Nia Davis, 33, a doctoral student at the University of New Orleans, said she hopes Obama's presidency galvanizes the U.S. government into increased action in a city still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"This has been mostly a citizen-led rebuilding effort," Davis said. "It's time for the government to really step in and do its share."

In Washington, the event attracted about 1.8 million people, according to Mayor Adrian Fenty. People stood shoulder-to-shoulder from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, 14 blocks away.

Tens of thousands more stood as far back as the Lincoln Memorial, 2 miles from the Capitol, and watched the swearing-in on giant TV screens along the Mall.

Visitors from everywhere

People came from all over — "from as far as the Earth is wide," said Mikki Hill, 26, of Winston-Salem, N.C.

Mamadou and Macky Bah, natives of the African country of Guinea, flew in from Haiti and London, respectively. The Bah brothers got to the Mall about 5 a.m., a half-hour after it opened, and were standing a half-mile from the Capitol — the closest spot for spectators without tickets.

"No sense coming here and not having a good spot," Mamadou said.

They shivered like everyone else, despite layers of thermal underwear, hand warmers, electric socks and untold gallons of hot coffee and chocolate. Shelton Iddeen, 57, of Greensboro, N.C., arrived at 4 a.m. and huddled in front of an ambulance to warm up.

"My hands feel really bad," he said. "You can't feel your toes."

But it was worth it, they said. History teacher Calvin Adams of Arlington, Va., said he would have taken the day off to come even if local schools had not closed. "Eventually I'll teach American history," said Adams, 23. "I'll say, 'This is how it works, because I've been there, I've seen it.' "

Hours before the ceremony, shivering people all over the East boarded buses in darkness to reach Washington by dawn. They included Andrew Sagarin, 20, a Syracuse University student: "You can say, 'I was there, I saw it, when things turned around.' "

People who grew up going to segregated schools, swimming in segregated pools and eating in segregated diners stood side by side on the Mall. Two were African-Americans Cleveland and Lynda Wesley of Houston, who were on the Mall to see the sun rise.

Although educated people — he a retired electronics engineer, she a retired assistant principal — words failed them.

"This situation is so emotional it's basically an unreal experience," Cleveland said. But he knew this much: "We did overcome."

Some were happy to have Obama; some were even happier to be rid of his predecessor.

A vendor near the Mall did a good business selling little American flags he advertised as "Bush repellents."

"To see that Bush helicopter take off was exhilarating," Green said.

Watching on a BlackBerry

Nothing, it seemed, could ruin the day.

Bob and Mattie Brown traveled from Louisville but didn't get into Washington in time to get close enough to a giant TV screen to see anything.

That was OK, Bob Brown said. His father had taken him to Kennedy's inauguration in 1961, he said, and since there were no big TV screens then, he couldn't see that one, either.

Jill Kronstadt, an English teacher from Maryland who said she lucked into an inaugural ticket, nonetheless ended up experiencing the event via BlackBerry.

Although she arrived three hours early, she got stuck with hundreds of others waiting to get through a security checkpoint. As the swearing-in began, someone used a BlackBerry to get a live feed off the Internet.

"Everybody got very quiet and we all listened to it on that tiny speaker," she said. "We listened to the whole thing that way. Never saw a thing."

On a day of symbolic and physical transition, one family was moving out of the White House and another was moving in. As usual, President Bush had been up early at the White House. He took a last stroll around the grounds, left the traditional note for his successor in the top drawer of his desk, and spoke on the phone with several aides. When Obama arrived, Bush greeted him with a few hearty pats on the arm.

By noon, when Obama was taking the oath, workers were loading boxes onto a moving van behind the White House. Then came the Inaugural Parade and a series of Inaugural Balls — the Obamas were scheduled to attend 10 — that would last into the early morning hours Wednesday.

Leonard Garyson said he couldn't wait to get back to his job as a school custodian in Grand Rapids, Mich., and tell the students about his experience — "and show them they can never again say a black boy can't grow up to be president.

"Now," he said, "I just need to find someplace to cry."