As the ball drops in Times Square, New York's next mayor will be taking the oath of office in a ghost station below the city, the New York Times reports. Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani plans to be sworn in just after midnight at the long-closed City Hall subway station, a 1904 showpiece of tiled arches, chandeliers, and vaulted ceilings that he says embodies the kind of public ambition he wants to revive. New York Attorney General Letitia James, a key ally, will administer the oath at a small private ceremony with Mamdani's family and close advisers. She called the subway the city's "lifeblood" and a "great equalizer," praising Mamdani for focusing on a city "we can thrive in, no matter what subway line you use."
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, built his winning campaign around affordability, pushing universal child care, free and faster buses, and a rent freeze for a million stabilized apartments. About 13 hours after the subterranean swearing-in, he'll hold a large public inauguration outside City Hall, where Sen. Bernie Sanders will swear him in before a crowd expected to reach 40,000, with parts of Broadway shut down. The public block party stands in stark contrast to the typical inauguration in the city, which is usually open to just 4,000 ticketed guests.
The setting is loaded with symbolism. City Hall station, once the glamorous centerpiece of the original 9.1-mile subway line, was shut in 1945 because its sharply curved platform no longer fit newer trains. Today it's mostly seen on official tours or by riders who stay on the 6 train past Brooklyn Bridge as it loops through the station before heading uptown, Streetsblog reports. Transit historians say the station was built as part of the early "City Beautiful" movement—an attempt to marry impressive public design with civic pride. Mamdani says taking the oath there at the start of a new year is meant to link that older vision of public works to his own promise of a "new era of opportunity" for millions of New Yorkers, ABC 7 reports.
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