By Matthew Russell Lee
GRACIE MANSION NYC, December 3 -- At Mayor Michael Bloomberg's holiday party for the press on December 2, the jokes were about Cathie Black and her lack of background in pedagogy. Bloomberg was given as a present a box of Nilla Wafers, said to be from a 99 cent store on Chambers Street, which on the back said Vanilla Waivers.
More interesting was a tour of the upstairs of Gracie Mansion. The guide, who will remain in the shadows for reasons that will become clear, began with what he called the master bedroom. Until Bloomberg, he said, it was called the Mayor's bedroom, as all New York City mayor's from LaGuardia to Giuliani slept there.
Next came the room of the the wife of Mayor Wagner, who raised some $800,000 dollars to build a new wing on Gracie Mansion, where downstairs Bloomberg was working the crowd of reporters, who nibbled on onion tarts with the ubiquitous balsamic vinegar and passable holiday cookies.
Facing the East River, across which British cannons in Queens fired at George Washington's artillery set up on this spot during the Revolutionary War, is a guest room which has hosted, among others, Nelson Mandela, Menachem Begin and Desmond Tutu. Guiliani's daughter's room was converted by Bloomberg's personal interior decorator Jaime Drake into an “old country” bedroom complete with long armed bed warmer in the fireplace.
By the staircase to get back down is a sign board with the names of contributors to the Gracie Mansion Conservancy. Inner City Press asked if companies which do buiness with the City can give money to the Conservancy.
The Conservancy is separate from the City, Inner City Press was told. We will have more on this. Quickly a higher up in the Conservancy approached. The tour would have to be called off, Inner City Press was told. Any such questions should be directed to the press office, not to the “docent.” It was implied that Inner City Press would somehow need the press office's permission to write this article.
Downstairs the drinking and eating continued, the latter largely from the kosher table. There is an oil painting of Mrs. Wagner, and a breakfast room where, among others, the Russian oligarch owner of the Nets was hosted. Ah, Brooklyn real estate. In the room there is a convex mirror, too high to see your face in, meant to spread light.
In Gracie breakfast room, convex mirror, oligarch not shown, all a bit off kilter (c)MRLee
The history of the Gracie Mansion was finally explained. Gracie was a Scottish businessman -- he might have owned the Nets or Knicks of his day -- who looked for a place “uptown in the country” to do his entertaining. He chose the site from which George Washington was routed.
His business failed, and the house passed from hand to hand, finally ending up abandoned when it was taken by the City under eminent domain to build what's now the FDR Drive. During construction, New York's “Master Builder” Robert Moses had the lawn raises so the highway would go undernearth.
No such delicacy was used by Moses in the Bronx, where tenements and bus depots were mowed down for the Cross Bronx Expressway. Ironically, in one of Gracie Mansion's downstairs rooms on Thursday night, a flat screen TV played images of the South Bronx in the 1970s, the burned out blocks of Charlotte Street and graffitied Number Five train over Southern Boulevard and Boston Road. It played without the sound on.
LaGuardia, originator of Public Markets in the Bronx and Essex Street, was offered two mansions as possible homes: one on 75th and Riverside deemed “too fancy” by the Little Flower, and Gracie Mansion, which he okayed. Moses had the Mansion renovated -- it had become a public restroom, a storehouse for the Parks Department and purveyor of Italian ices -- and LaGuardia moved in. All mayors since, until Bloomberg, lived here.
The reporters talk turned to Bloomberg, how he bought a floor of the townhouse next to his on 79th Street in order to extend his living room, how he serves popcorn and hotdogs on expensive china, how an SUV drives him to the express IRT stop on 59th Street for his subway ride downtown. It was time to go.
