{"id":100828,"date":"2026-01-15T03:59:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T03:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100828\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T03:59:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T03:59:12","slug":"the-ghosts-of-gracie-mansion-which-zohran-mamdani-and-rama-duwaji-now-call-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/100828\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ghosts\u00a0of Gracie Mansion, Which\u00a0Zohran Mamdani and Rama Duwaji Now Call Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>, its previous occupant, had some words of advice. \u201cBeware of the ghost,\u201d he told a Fox Business reporter<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s a friendly ghost, as long as you\u2019re doing right by the city,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t become right by the city, he turns into a poltergeist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Technically, Adams should have said she. Rumor has it that the ghost has an identity: that of Elizabeth Wolcott.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth was the young blue-blooded bride of William Gracie, the son of Gracie Mansion<\/a>\u2019s 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\u2014Elizabeth died suddenly that very night. \u201cThe 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\u2014die. She had ruptured a blood vessel. It was a melancholy affair,\u201d author Walter Barrett dramatically wrote in The Old Merchants of New York City, a book published in 1863. Barrett was almost definitely sensationalizing\u2014historical 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some context: When Mamdani confirmed he and Duwaji would move from their one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[881,9,24,55,54,56,87,8089,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-100828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-history","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-city-news","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-society","16":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}