Mamdani has a place in NYC history. But which place in the century-long list of mayors?

Zohran Mamdani He can claim many firsts when he becomes mayor of New York on January 1.

besides being the first Muslim And the first person of South Asian heritage elected to the office, the Democrat is also set to shape the city’s history by becoming the 112th mayor instead of the 111th, as he had hoped. This is due to a long-standing oversight in record-keeping that has recently attracted new attention.

“I’m excited to be mayor,” Mamdani told reporters after learning the results of the vote count on Wednesday. It shows how tricky the arithmetic of history can be.

Paul Hortenstein, an independent historian researching the involvement of New York’s early mayors in slavery, recently observed that the city government’s widely used list of mayors undercounted Matthias Nichols, a figure from the early years of slavery. English Colonial rule in New York.

Nicholas is listed as the sixth mayor from 1671 to 1672, but there is no mention of his return to office two years later. In the interim, successor John Lawrence took over, then was ousted by a Dutch invasion which briefly imposed a different form of colonial government. The Netherlands eventually gave up the territory in exchange for other concessions, and the new English governor reappointed Nicholas in late 1674.

Other mayors were counted multiple times if they served non-consecutive terms, so Hortenstein suggested that Nicholas should receive the same treatment. The reform will include a change in the number of mayors from William Dervall (who became number 9) to the current mayors, spanning 350 years. eric adams (Who will be number 111).

“The number of mayors is an interesting issue that is more difficult than it appears at first glance,” Hortenstein said by phone.

A Washington, DC-area researcher, Hortenstein has his own history with New York mayors: He worked for Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 re-election campaign. (If the list were reordered, Bloomberg would be ranked 109th for the third time in a row.)

He hopes the debate will spark interest in early mayors and their personal and political involvement with slavery.

As Hortenstein noted, the late Peter Kristof, a former New York State Library official, pointed out the Nichols numbering flub in 1989. This time, after local news site Gothamist reported on the apparent mayoral miscount, the city’s Department of Records and Information Services took notice.

In a Dec. 11 blog post, agency archivist Michael Lorenzini painstakingly explored the complexities and gaps in the centuries-old records. When the city began printing lists of past mayors in the mid-1800s, Nicholls’ second term was not included.

“It appears that on January 1, 2026, Mayor Mamdani should be Mayor No. 112,” Lorenzini wrote, while “the numbering of ‘mayors’ of New York City has been somewhat arbitrary and inconsistent.”

The list does not count “burgomasters”, mayor-like officials who served in pairs during certain periods of Dutch rule. There is no accounting for any of these leaders native Americans Who lived in this area for thousands of years before colonization. Some acting mayors are mentioned, but numbers are not given – except for a more obscure version of the list, which is recorded in a 2015 document in the city archives.

Furthermore, equating “mayors” is also, to some extent, like comparing apples and oranges. The mayor initially led New York City, which initially included only Manhattan before expanding to include the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island in the late 1800s.

So how much does the numerical list ultimately matter?

“In some ways, it’s a kind of educational exercise,” Lorenzini said over the phone this week. “But I think what’s interesting to me is that we still have these records, and people can still dive into them and still find something new or something to debate. History is still alive.”