Zohran Mamdani was sworn in as New York City’s 112th mayor just after midnight on New Year’s Day under the glow of chandeliers inside an abandoned City Hall subway station.
Mamdani said he chose the venue because it represents a bygone era of civic ambition he aims to revive. The new mayor has vowed to pursue an aggressive affordability agenda centered on a rent freeze for stabilized tenants, free and fast buses, and universal childcare.
“This is truly the honor and the privilege of a lifetime,” Mamdani told reporters after he was sworn in by State Attorney General Letitia James.
Like his improbable campaign where he began as a low profile state assemblymember representing Astoria, Queens, the ceremony featured several firsts. Mamdani is the city’s first Muslim and Asian American mayor. He placed his hand on two Qurans — one belonging to his family and another owned by Arturo Schomburg, the Black writer and historian — as he recited the oath of office below an ornately tiled arch that read “City Hall.”
He is the first democratic socialist to lead City Hall. And at 34, he is also the youngest mayor in over a century.
Mamdani was joined by his wife, Rama Duwaji. The audience included his parents, the film director Mira Nair and Columbia scholar Mahmood Mamdani, several close advisers, and a group of reporters. As everyone waited for midnight to strike, Mamdani was asked to share his New Year’s resolution. He simply smiled.
In a nod to the setting, Mamdani used his swearing-in ceremony to announce Mike Flynn, a transit veteran, as his transportation commissioner.
Mamdani said he wanted to make the city’s streetscape and public transit “the envy of the world.”
The City Hall station opened in 1904 as one of 28 stations in the subway system. The grand station features chandeliers, skylights and elegant arches – a marked contrast from the dreary Chambers Street station nearby. The station closed in 1945 due to low ridership, as well as new larger trains that could not safely operate there.
The station “was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives. That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath City Hall,” Mamdani said in a statement. “It will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above.”
The intimate swearing-in ceremony will be followed by an inauguration and block party in front of City Hall on Thursday at 1 p.m. that is expected to draw 40,000 supporters.
The event will feature two of his closest progressive allies and mentors. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will deliver opening remarks. Sen. Bernie Sanders will administer the oath of office.
Mayor Eric Adams said on Tuesday that he would attend the ceremony, after initially saying he wasn’t sure if he would show up. Adams spent his final weeks in office traveling abroad and undermining his successor with a series of last minute decisions.
He recently appointed four people to serve on the Rent Guidelines Board. The move could complicate Mamdani’s pledge to freeze rents for roughly 1 million rent-stabilized apartments. On his last day in office, Adams announced a new charter revision commission that could force Mamdani to contend with ballot proposals written by his predecessor’s allies.
The ceremony ended with paperwork and a financial transaction. Mamdani signed his name into a leather-bound book handed to him by the city clerk, Michael McSweeney. He then gave him $9 in cash, as required by the rules.
