Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said Monday that he and his wife are moving into Gracie Mansion, the traditional home of most NYC mayors.
The 34-year-old outgoing Queens Assembly member and his wife will move into the Upper East Side home, a historic landmark located within Carl Schurz Park and overlooking the East River, when he takes office on Jan. 1. He announced the decision on Instagram on Dec. 8.
Mamdani said he made the decision to move uptown for safety reasons and to focus on the affordability agenda he pushed during his campaign. At the forefront of that agenda is freezing rent for 2 million stabilized tenants, impacting about a quarter of all NYC apartments, and creating “fast and free” buses. Although Mamdani’s rent-freeze promise is ambitious, he has said he would help make it happen by appointing Rent Guidelines Board members who would vote to keep stabilized rents flat each year.
“This decision came down to our family’s safety and the importance of dedicating all of my focus on enacting the affordability agenda New Yorkers voted for,” he wrote in the post.
Although Gracie Mansion, built in 1799, is known as the official residence of the mayor of NYC, not every mayor chooses to live there. The last two mayors — outgoing Eric Adams and his predecessor, Bill de Blasio — took up residence at Gracie Mansion, but before them, Michael Bloomberg chose to live in his own private Manhattan home during his three consecutive terms in office.
The historic home is a two-story Federal-style house located at East End Avenue and 88th Street. It boasts five bedrooms and five bathrooms on its 11,000 square feet of living space. According to the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, it is one of the oldest surviving wooden structures in Manhattan. It has gone through multiple renovations, including in 2002 when the interior and exterior were renovated to increase accessibility to the public and city agencies.
Mamdani is the first mayor since Ed Koch to have previously lived in a rent-stabilized or rent-controlled apartment. Koch moved into Gracie Mansion in 1978 after his election as the city’s 105th mayor, but retained his rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village during his three terms in office.
During the campaign trail, Mamdani’s living situation became a heated topic of debate among the mayoral contenders. His main opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, razzed him over his occupancy of a rent-stabilized apartment while earning over $140,000 from his job in state government.
In December 2022, New York legislators gave themselves a 29% raise over their $110,000 salary. Mamdani has been in the Assembly since 2021.
Mamdani and his wife have lived in Astoria, one of NYC’s trendiest neighborhoods, for several years. He described what he will miss about both his apartment and the surrounding neighborhood.
“We will miss much about our home in Astoria,” he said. “Cooking dinner side by side in our kitchen, sharing a sleepy elevator ride with our neighbors in the evening, hearing music and laughter vibrate through the walls of the apartment.”
The couple will likely have to adjust to the features of their new home, a country house situated along a scenic bend on the East River — a vastly different view from the bustling metro scene of Astoria, Queens.
“While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me and the work I do,” the mayor-elect said.
