Mamdani to take oath of office on New Year’s Eve in Gilded Age subway station beneath city hall
While tens of thousands of New Yorkers will be in Times Square for countdown to 2026, the city’s mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has said he will be sworn into office in an underground midnight private ceremony at an abandoned subway station built during the Gilded Age.
Mamdani, 34, plans to take the oath of office on New Year’s Eve in a disused subway station beneath city hall which acts as turnaround for the local 5 train. The unusual choice of venue for the ceremony, Mamdani said, is symbolically resonant of the “inauguration of a new era”.
“It was a physical monument to a city that dared to be both beautiful and build great things that would transform working peoples’ lives,” Mamdani said in a statement.
“That ambition need not be a memory confined only to our past, nor must it be isolated only to the tunnels beneath city hall: it will be the purpose of the administration fortunate enough to serve New Yorkers from the building above.”
