Some context: When Mamdani confirmed he and Duwaji would move from their one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, into Gracie Mansion back in December, Eric Adams, its previous occupant, had some words of advice. “Beware of the ghost,” he told a Fox Business reporter. “It’s a friendly ghost, as long as you’re doing right by the city,” he said. “If you don’t become right by the city, he turns into a poltergeist.”
Technically, Adams should have said she. Rumor has it that the ghost has an identity: that of Elizabeth Wolcott.
Elizabeth was the young blue-blooded bride of William Gracie, the son of Gracie Mansion’s original owner and namesake, Archibald Gracie, a wealthy Scottish merchant. On July 2, 1813, William and Elizabeth held their wedding celebration on the grounds of the grand New York estate. Yet, according to urban legend, a great tragedy struck—Elizabeth died suddenly that very night. “The festivities were kept up until a late hour. The bride retired with her bridesmaids, and the happy husband was sent to see his young bride—die. She had ruptured a blood vessel. It was a melancholy affair,” author Walter Barrett dramatically wrote in The Old Merchants of New York City, a book published in 1863. Barrett was almost definitely sensationalizing—historical records say that Wolcott died in 1819 from apoplexy at the house. But the ghost is just one piece of lore from a 227-year-old house that has a bookshelf full of them.