Photo copyright © 2026 by Gerry O’Brien
Much has been said about New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, being a socialist. And so he is. What we should be asking is whether Zohran’s political ideology is a foundation or a ceiling.
Previous Mayors like Fiorello LaGuardia (a pro-FDR Republican endorsed by the Socialist and American Labor Parties) and Ed Koch (a Greenwich Village Reformer who marched against the Vietnam War), had solidly left-of-center views, but their ideology was a foundation: it gave them a philosophical grounding and a basic set of ideals in life and in politics. But they never let it constrain them, and New York was a better place for it.
To other Mayors, like Bill de Blasio, ideology was a ceiling: it boxed them in, limited their view of the city and the world around them, constrained their actions, and diminished their mayoral achievements. New York City suffered because of it.
Here’s hoping the new Mayor follows in the footsteps of Ed Koch (seen above in his City Hall Office in 1983), and Fiorello LaGuardia. Because in New York City, the sky’s the limit.
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the passage of the NYC Landmarks Law, the New York Review of Books has published Beyond Architecture: the NEW New York. This book contains twelve essays on the past, present and future of historic preservation in New York City. My photo of the keystone-cantilevered marble staircase in the New York City Hall rotunda was selected to illustrate the chapter entitled Engineering Landmarks. This photo was originally posted here on my blog in 2017, which is how they found it. I’m delighted it was chosen for this book, which is available on Amazon and other sites starting today.