Gracie Mansion
Walking right up into Mayor Adams' house!
On the island of Manhattan in the City of New York, just past the farthest East side of East 88th Street, there sits a large buttercream-yellow house looking onto the East River and Queens beyond. This has been the official residence of the New York City Mayor for the past 83 years, and has been a part of American history for as long as there has been an American history. This is Gracie Mansion.
Gracie Mansion was built by Archibald Gracie in the late 18th century, just after the victory of the American Revolutionary War. The Gracies lived happily there for about thirty years, but lost an enormous percentage of their fortune in the war of 1812, and decided to sell the house. It passed hands for a period of years and several wealthy-but-not-wealthy-enough families until it was bought by the City of New York in 1896. The city was in the process of developing Carl Schurz park, the land on which the mansion stands, and in that period Gracie Mansion was primarily used as park property, with spaces for classrooms and public toilets. In 1927, Gracie Mansion was converted to the first location of the Museum of the City of New York(which currently resides at 1220 5th Ave), but only stayed there a few years because it was to small to hold the museum’s collection.
It wasn’t until 1935 that an idea began to circulate— what if Gracie Mansion became the official residence of the mayor of the city? Urban planner Robert Moses proposed the idea to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, which he rejected several times(feeling that it was too ostentatious for a people’s mayor) before relenting, becoming the first of a long line of mayors after him to reside at Gracie Mansion. In fact, every mayor since La Guardia has resided at Gracie Mansion— except for Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Though we got a tour of the full first floor of Gracie Mansion, for security reasons we were only allowed to photograph the ballroom and any pieces of art from the mayor’s contemporary collection(perplexingly, I was given the instruction to “only photograph things that don’t look like they belong in a museum, like this one”, while pointing to the painting above, but it was clarified later). Currently on show is Identities in Technicolor: a Pride Installation, a curated showing of the works of LGBTQ+ artists Arturo Forero and Devin Sparkles.
I was the World’s Biggest Fan of our two tour guides. Teresa, a retired high school history teacher from Queens and Renault, who just finished serving in the Navy and who’s now working on his education and certification to become a high school history teacher in the Bronx. Both of their accents were thick and very specific. Teresa took great glee in telling us a story about not knowing whether Mayor Adams was living there at the start of his term and her ex-husband sending her an article from The Guardian saying he wasn’t living there because he was scared of ghosts, and she says “I’m not telling the tours that the mayor’s scared of ghosts!” and he says “The Guardian is a very reputable source!”(Adams later did an interview with CBS New York confirming the rumor). Renault was a lot more grounded but took the time to inform us that the painting in the next room(not the one pictured below) is not, in fact, of Alicia Keys. They had great energy and were clearly having an excellent time giving this tour.
To the best of my memory the rooms that we saw were the Peach Room(a small peach-colored sitting area, very cosy), the Blue Room(an office-style meeting room with an enormous glass bookcase), the Dining Room(which was fully wallpapered over with this beautiful mural-style wallpaper from the 1800s, which I heard and wrote down as “zudeya” and have not been able to find since— any thoughts?), the Sitting(?) Room(with these large glass windows that it’s become tradition for the mayor’s wife and/or children to carve their name into[or, in the case of one trickster kid, to carve “Barak Obama 2021” into]), and the Green Room(which, among other things, had on display a canonball from a Revolutionary War-Era British armory which had been found under the foundation of the house).
During Mayor Ed Koch’s term, he announced plans to renovate Gracie Mansion— to improve the modern infrastructure(such as HVAC and electrical systems, but also an expansion of staff rooms and a gourmet kitchen) but also to restore the building as close to the original design of Archibald Gracie’s time as possible. Designers and historians were brought in for the wallpaper, the paint samples, the flooring and every piece of furniture and the result is a house which would be as familiar to the Gracie family as it is to any mayor living there since.
I’ve toured a lot of historic houses for this project— at a quick count at least nine— but this may be the only one I visit that is still inhabited. It having been basically continuously inhabited by variously important people for the past several hundred years means that guests to the house include John Quincy Adams and Charlie Chaplin and Jay Z, which is incredible. The curators of the Gracie Mansion Conservancy have made some really cool choices when it comes to the juxtaposition of the house’s long and storied journey versus the very contemporary time it is still being used in, showing that while this house has always had a historic significance, history is still being made today and we should take the time to stop and appreciate that whenever we can.
ADMISSION: Free
GIFT SHOP: No
BATHROOM: Yes
WHEELCHAIR ACCESSIBLE: Yes
Aug 10: Guggenheim Museum
Aug 17: Hall of Fame for Great Americans
Aug 24: Hamilton Grange National Memorial
Aug 31: Harbor Defense Museum
I am the World’s Biggest Fan of this substack
This is so cool! While I am a neighbor to the Gracie Mansion I haven't been, but this makes me want to!