Zohran Mamdani began the official transfer to Gracie Mansion, the institutional residence of the mayor of New York, along with his wife Rama Duwaji. The couple left a quiet apartment in Astoria, Queens, where the mayor lived from 2019 paying about $2,300 a month, to settle in the historic building of 1,000 square meters on the Upper East Side that has been hosting most of the city’s first citizens for decades. Mamdani is expected Monday afternoon for a press conference in Gracie Mansion.
The passage from Astoria to the Upper East Side is geographically short – the two neighborhoods are separated only by an East River curve – but politically and culturally relevant. Astoria is one of the heterogeneous districts of New York, with a strong presence of immigrant communities and a progressive tradition that earned her the nickname of part of the “Commie Corridor”, the axis of Brooklyn and Queens known to always vote on the left. This is where Mamdani, a socialist Democrat, built his public profile and electoral base, first in the State Assembly and then in the City Hall race, often telling the daily life of the neighborhood and citing Bangladesi, Thai and Afghan restaurants as symbols of his idea of city.
The Upper East Side is almost the opposite of sociology. It is one of the districts with the highest average income and with one of the lowest poverty rates in New York, inhabited largely by white residents and historically associated with consolidated wealth. In the municipal elections Mamdani gathered consensus only in some sections of Yorkville, the area that includes Gracie Mansion, while in the rest of the district prevailed the opposition, in some cases expressed explicitly during the election campaign.
The housing conditions also mark a certain discontinuity: Gracie Mansion has five bedrooms and representation areas such as a ballroom and a formal dining room, an internal cook and a large garden overlooking the East River. The building, built in 1799 and became the official residence of the mayor in 1942, was continuously inhabited by Fiorello La Guardia, John Lindsay and Edward I. Koch, while other mayors – including Michael Bloomberg – preferred to continue to reside in private homes. The bathrooms of the residence were restored during the Bloomberg administration, although the current state is not known.
The transfer, which is likely to enter into tension with the proletarian image built over the years by the mayor, was justified by Mamdani especially for security reasons. Gracie Mansion is surrounded by a permanent fence, equipped with cameras, and access includes metal detector controls. In a widespread statement last month, the mayor explained that the choice is linked to “family security” and the need to focus on the agenda for economic accessibility that characterized its campaign. Previously, interviewed by the “New Yorker Radio Hour”, he had minimized the theme of public image, saying not to think too much about the consistency of his “brand” with the new residence.
L’articolo Zohran Mamdani started moving to Gracie Mansion proviene da IlNewyorkese.
