What is Gracie Mansion and why is Zohran Mamdani moving in?

When New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani moves into Gracie Mansion, the elegant 18th-century house long associated with New York’s political elite on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in January, he will leave behind the rather more modest, rent-controlled Queens apartment he has lived in for several years.

For a democratic socialist who has been elected by New Yorkers on a housing justice ticket, the contrast may seem striking to observers.

Mamdani won last month’s New York mayoral election, in part because the city is facing a severe housing crisis, with record-high rents and one of the lowest property vacancy rates in the country. Mamdani built his campaign around freezing rents and expanding affordable housing.

So what exactly is Gracie Mansion, and why does it matter in a city where housing has become a key political issue?

What is Gracie Mansion?

Gracie Mansion has been the official residence of the mayor of New York City since 1942. A yellow-painted, Federal-style wooden house built in 1799, it is located inside Carl Schurz Park on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

According to the Historic House Trust, which oversees the city’s historic homes, it was originally designed as a two-storey country villa overlooking the East River.

The main house reportedly has five bedrooms and five bathrooms, with period fireplaces and high ceilings.

The residence today includes the original two-storey structure plus an events wing, which was added in the 1960s. According to the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, the combined complex now measures roughly 12,000 to 13,000 square feet (1,200 square metres), accommodating formal sitting rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and spaces for official functions.

The building is maintained as a city-owned asset and is made available to each incoming mayor as their official home.

Why is it called Gracie Mansion?

The house takes its name from Archibald Gracie, a Scottish-American shipping merchant who constructed it in 1799 within an estate to be his family’s country seat. At the time, it was some distance outside the city limits.

Although Gracie later lost the property due to financial hardship, his name remained attached to the estate in subsequent decades, and the city retained it when it took ownership at the end of the 19th century.

New York City acquired the property in 1896, incorporating the surrounding estate into what would become Carl Schurz Park. According to the Historic House Trust and the Gracie Mansion Conservancy, the building served a series of public uses during the following few decades, including as temporary quarters for the Museum of the City of New York.

In 1942, New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses urged Mayor Fiorello La Guardia to designate the house as the city’s official mayoral residence. At the time, the city lacked any formal mayoral home.

Moses saw this as an opportunity to create a dignified civic residence that would mirror the executive mansions used in other major American cities.

In 1966, the city added the Susan E Wagner Wing, a modernist extension designed to accommodate receptions and large meetings.

Since 1981, the house has been maintained by a public-private partnership, which funds its conservation and oversees public tours.

In 2002, Mayor Michael Bloomberg updated the interior and exterior of the building and increased accessibility to the public.

It has since been known as the “People’s House”.

Have mayors always lived at Gracie Mansion?

Gracie Mansion did not become the official mayoral residence until 1942, when La Guardia moved in following the city’s decision to assign the house to the mayor’s office.

Since 1942, most mayors have lived there, including Ed Koch, David Dinkins, Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams.

The most notable exception was Michael Bloomberg, who chose to remain in his private townhouse on the Upper East Side for the duration of his three terms as mayor. Bloomberg used Gracie Mansion only for events, according to US media reports.

Some mayors have divided their time between Gracie Mansion and their private residences, including Ed Koch, who kept his Greenwich Village apartment, and Rudy Giuliani’s family, who remained partly based in their East Side home.

When is Zohran Mamdani moving in?

Mamdani, 34, will take office in January. He has said he and his wife, the illustrator Rama Duwaji, will leave the rent-stabilised Astoria, Queens apartment he has lived in since 2018 and move into Gracie Mansion. The couple do not have children.

In a statement, Mamdani said his decision to move into the mansion – described by US media as being worth $100m – had been driven by safety considerations for his family and the need to focus fully on implementing the “affordability agenda” that shaped his campaign.

He also described the move as using the residence in the way it was intended – a civic resource provided so the mayor can perform official duties more effectively.

The move has raised questions about how this aligns with his tenants’ rights and affordability agenda, however, as he had previously tied the fact that he lived in a rent-controlled apartment to his campaign agenda of more affordable housing for New Yorkers.

“To Astoria: thank you for showing us the best of New York City,” Mamdani said in a statement on Wednesday. “While I may no longer live in Astoria, Astoria will always live inside me and the work I do.”

Why else is Gracie Mansion significant?

The mansion has been the site of many protests – many of them revolving around housing rights, particularly for asylum seekers and migrants. In August 2023, for example, an anti-immigration rally clashed with migrants’ rights counterprotesters on the doorstep.

People marching in the rally shouted slogans such as, “No migrants on Long Island! We pay a lot of property taxes!”

When the current New York mayor, Eric Adams, sought to remove New York City’s “right to shelter” law, which guarantees shelter with basic standards for homeless people, that year, a major protest and “sleep-in” took place outside Gracie Mansion in November.

In March 2024, Adams reached a legal agreement with homeless rights advocates allowing homeless migrants and asylum seekers to stay for only a maximum of 30 days in a shelter.

How severe is New York City’s housing crisis?

Housing policy was the centrepiece of Mamdani’s mayoral campaign.

He has pushed for a multi-year rent freeze on the city’s roughly one million rent-stabilised apartments, along with stronger tenant protections, more social housing and limits on speculative buying by landlords.

The city’s Housing and Vacancy Survey, cited in the city’s Rent Guidelines Board’s 2025 report, put the rental vacancy rate at just 1.41 percent, far below the 5 percent level that triggers rent-regulation powers in New York State.

“This translates into the availability of just 33,000 vacant units out of almost 2.4 million rental units Citywide,” the report reads.

Separately, market data shows how high New York rents have become.

Realtor.com’s 2025 quarterly report put the citywide median asking rent at about $3,600 a month. Meanwhile, Douglas Elliman’s August 2025 rental market report shows that two-bedroom units routinely list for $5,000 to more than $5,500 in Manhattan and $3,200 to $4,000 in many Brooklyn and Queens neighbourhoods.

In each of the five boroughs of New York City, average rents make up a high proportion of average incomes.

In Manhattan, where the average income is about $5,100 per month, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $4,200. In Brooklyn, the average income is about $3,400, compared with the average rent on a one-bedroom apartment of $2,800.

In contrast, cities which prioritise affordable housing, like Vienna, Austria, take a very different approach. The city owns and manages hundreds of thousands of apartments and keeps rents far below market levels.

According to several media reports, a typical two-bedroom apartment in Vienna can be rented for less than 600 euros ($697) a month. In New York, similar units are advertised for five to eight times that amount.