Zohran Mamdani to be sworn in as New York’s 111th mayor, but historians say he is really No 112
When Zohran Mamdani takes the oath of office on 1 January, he will be celebrated as New York City’s 111th mayor. Yet one historian says that number is wrong, claiming a centuries old error miscounts every mayor since 1674.
Paul Hortenstine, a public policy and history researcher based in Washington DC, says Mamdani will actually be the city’s 112th mayor. His findings indicate that Matthias Nicolls served two nonconsecutive terms, but only one was ever recorded in the official list.
That omission triggers a chain reaction. If Nicolls’ missing year is counted, then every subsequent mayor’s number shifts upward by one. Fiorello La Guardia, long recognised as the 99th mayor, would become the 100th. Eric Adams, who often calls himself “110,” would actually be 111.
“I would hope that the city takes the history of mayors very seriously,” Hortenstine said.
Before Zohran Research reveals a missing mayoral year
Hortenstine uncovered references to Nicolls’ second term while investigating links between early mayoral administrations and slavery. A record in the papers of Edmund Andros, the colonial governor of New York, mentioned Nicolls serving again in 1675.
However, the city’s archive book, “The Renascence of City Hall,” only lists Nicolls’ first term in 1672. Like US presidents, nonconsecutive mayoral terms should be counted twice, meaning Nicolls’ second year should appear but does not.
Further confirmation came from the New York Historical. Spokesperson Marybeth Ihle said a preliminary search found three references to Nicolls’ 1674 to 1675 mayoralty in “The Iconography of Manhattan Island,” a major historical text based on primary sources.
Historians raised the discrepancy decades ago
As Hortenstine dug deeper, he discovered this was not the first time the error had been noticed. In 1989, historian Peter R Christoph highlighted the same issue in the records of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
“Edward I Koch is the 105th Mayor of New York,” Christoph wrote. “But they are wrong: He is the 106th.” Christoph concluded that a mistake in an 1841 Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York had been repeated ever since.
Christoph died in 2019.
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City archivists acknowledge the finding, but records remain unchanged
Ken Cobb, assistant commissioner at the city’s Department of Records, said he was unaware of any official effort to investigate the discrepancy. The city’s Green Book, which lists every mayor back to 1665, still omits Nicolls’ second term.
“We are the keepers of the records. We are not the creators of the records,” Cobb said. “Apparently this historian noticed the discrepancy.”
There is precedent for revising the official list. In 1937, Charles Lodwick, who served from 1694 to 1695, was inserted retroactively as the 21st mayor, shifting all successors upward by one.
Who was Matthias Nicolls?
Historical documents show Nicolls was born in England in 1630. He served as a lawyer and colonial official under British rule, owned land in Long Island, and, like other elite figures of the era, enslaved people.
Whether his second term will be recognised by the outgoing administration remains unclear.
First deputy mayor Randy Mastro admitted he had never heard of the missing mayor. “I think we will leave this issue for historians and, for a change, the next administration,” he said.
