The last mayor to live in Gracie Mansion—the home of the mayor of New York City since Fiorello La Guardia moved in in 1942—was Rudy Giuliani. And if our current billionaire mayor from Boston has his way, Rudy'll remain the last. After a Journal story yesterday suggested the next mayor might reside in the storied building (designated by Robert Moses for the job holder), Hizzoner got all huffy and expressed his opinion that it would be so "wrong" for a mayor to move into the building. Seriously, doesn't everyone have a multimillion dollar townhouse or two?
"To take one of the great houses in this city away from the public I just think is wrong," Bloomberg said today at an unrelated news conference. "The mayor should not live there. And I think, you know, everybody’s going to understand if a mayor lives there, then what they’re doing is they’re costing this city a lot of money, and depriving the rest of the city of one of the great facilities any city has."
"It’s a great house for everybody and not for one family, and it should be used as we use it now," Bloomberg, who reportedly won't even spend one night in the building to appease his curious girlfriend, went on. "There are events every day at Gracie Mansion throughout the whole house. If a mayor’s family is living there, most of that house, a good half of it, is just not available. A lot of people want to be mayor. You don’t have to give them extra money as a housing allowance."
So basically, what Bloomberg is saying is that because he is wealthy enough to eschew the tradition of housing the city's head in Gracie, everybody else should too. And he isn't wrong that moving a people back into the house will reduce the number of functions it can hold. But so what? Should the next mayor only take a $1 a year salary like Bloomberg, too? If Bloomberg had actually run for President (and somehow won) would he have rejected the White House as well?
At least not everyone agrees with the three-term mayor. Former Gracie occupier Ed Koch, speaking to the Journal earlier, says that "I have no doubt that every one of the named candidates, if they're elected, will move into Gracie Mansion. They will never regret it—it's history. It's also one of the most beautiful places in the whole city to live." Plus, sometimes it has seals!
