Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year run of city government ended at 5:05 p.m. Tuesday, when he emerged for the last time from City Hall and was greeted by hundreds of well-wishers.
A staffer released 3 gold balloons in the shape of a one, a zero and an eight to mark his place in history as the city’s 108th chief executive.
Bloomberg walked slowly through the parting crowd, pausing to shake hands and hug friends, aides and supporters who formed a receiving line four to five deep all the way to the nearby Brooklyn Bridge subway stop.
The mayor went into the subway to go home – a fitting bookend to his first day in office in 2002, when he arrived at City hall by subway.
In one of his final Twitter messages as mayor, he wrote: “One my first day in office I visited the World Trade Center site and vowed NYC would rebuild stronger than ever. Today I can say we have.”
At 5:30 p.m., incoming Mayor Bill de Blasio – who was visiting City Hall to prepare for the transition – slipped out through a back entrance away from the Bloomberg hoopla.
Earlier, de Blasio told reporters that the mayor’s job was “in my bloodstream in a lot of different ways for a long, long time.”
