EXCLUSIVE: Mamdani’s Official Swearing In Will Be At Abandoned Original City Hall Subway Station

Streetsblog provides high-quality journalism and analysis for free — which is something to be celebrated in an era of paywalls. Once a year, we ask for your tax-deductible donations to support our reporters and editors as they advance the movement to end car dependency in our communities.

If you already support our work, thank you! If not, can we ask for your help? This year’s fundraiser includes a special gift for our biggest supporters. Don’t miss out.

Together, we can create a more livable, walkable, bikeable, equitable and enjoyable city for all. Happy holidays from the Streetsblog team!

Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in as mayor at midnight on Jan. 1 inside the old abandoned City Hall subway station, Streetsblog has learned — an official act that symbolically kicks off a new era with a tribute to an older one as well as shows a commitment to transit riders.

Mamdani said he views the station as a symbol for the aims of his upcoming administration, including the transformative politics that built the subway in the first place.

“When Old City Hall Station first opened in 1904 — one of New York’s 28 original subway stations — 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 told Streetsblog 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.

“When I take my oath from the station at the dawn of the New Year, I will do so humbled by the opportunity to lead millions of New Yorkers into a new era of opportunity, and honored to carry forward our city’s legacy of greatness,” he concluded.

Renowned as an architectural marvel, the old City Hall station was the first stop on the first subway ride back in 1904, but was closed to the public on New Year’s 1945 after low ridership and larger trains combined to make it obsolete. The station looks markedly different from other stops on the subway system, having been built with chandeliers and skylights that once brought in light from City Hall Park (officials blacked them out during World War II).

Streetsblog had observed a group of city workers checking out the old station on Dec. 18, likely in preparation for the Jan. 1, but reporters were shooed away when they asked what the workers were doing.

The swearing-in will be a private ceremony attended by Mamdani’s family, with Attorney General Letitia James on hand to deliver the oath of office. Mamdani will be ceremonially sworn in at a public ceremony at City Hall at 1 p.m., this time alongside incoming Comptroller Mark Levine and re-elected Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) will conduct the ceremonial swearing-in at the daytime event, which will occur alongside a car-free “block party” on Broadway between Liberty and Murray streets.

The old City Hall station swearing-in will close the loop on an Instagram reel Mamdani posted on Election Day in November, shortly after he beat former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (again) and Republican Curtis Sliwa, which showed subway doors opening on the R/W City Hall station and played the message “The next and last stop is City Hall.”

The old station hasn’t fallen into disrepair, despite being vacant for 80 years. If anything, the lack of foot traffic has kept it from collecting the usual grit and grime that coats other subway stations.

New Yorkers can still get a glimpse of the station one of two ways: On an official tour with the New York Transit Museum, or by staying on a downtown 6 train after it reaches its Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall terminus and looking out the windows as the train loops through the old facility before heading back uptown.