After weeks of deliberation, Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has decided to move into Gracie Mansion after all. De Blasio says he was torn, in part because the family’s Park Slope home is closer to son Dante’s high school.
And considering his “tale of two New Yorks” rhetoric, we wouldn’t be surprised if the optics of departing brownstone Brooklyn for Manhattan’s Upper East Side also weighed on the minds of the incoming mayor and his advisers.
We think it’s a great move.
For one, Gracie Mansion is there, so the mayor might as well use it. As he does, he may even come to appreciate that the renovations that will make his life more comfortable were made possible by the wealthy New York he derided during the campaign.
The Post also takes a certain personal pride in de Blasio’s decision to move in. For Gracie Mansion is something of a second home for us. It was here that an important moment in this paper’s history was marked.
This was back in the autumn of 1801, when owner Archibald Gracie brought together a group of New York Federalists to urge them to pony up $10,000 to help Alexander Hamilton launch a new journalistic enterprise. The meeting was successful, and this newspaper was born.
We wish the mayor-elect and his family every happiness in their new home. And we hope it is only the first sign of future decisions that will bring him even closer to the spirit of the New York Post.