Here's why Mamdani will be NYC’s 112th mayor, not the 111th

NEW YORK - Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will be sworn in as New York City’s next mayor in just a few days, but historians say the number attached to his title has long been wrong.

What we know:

While Mamdani has often been described as the city’s 111th mayor, researchers now say he will actually be New York City’s 112th.

The discrepancy stems from a centuries-old record-keeping error involving a 17th-century mayor whose second, nonconsecutive term was overlooked, according to Michael Lorenzini, a researcher with the New York City Department of Records.

For example, President Donald Trump is considered both the 45th and 47th president.

Dig deeper:

In a recent blog post, Lorenzini said the city’s official list of mayors failed to account for a second term served by Mayor Matthias Nicolls from 1674 to 1675. That omission caused every mayor who followed to be misnumbered.

"One thing for certain is he is not Mayor 111," Lorenzini wrote of Mamdani.

Mayor Matthias Nicolls (1674-1675)

The backstory:

Nicolls first served as mayor in 1671, when New York was under English rule, making him the city’s sixth mayor at the time. In 1673, the Dutch briefly retook control of the colony, replacing the mayoral system with Dutch officials known as burgomasters.

When the English regained control in November 1674, Nicolls was sworn in again, this time as the city’s eighth mayor. That second term was later left out of official records.

From that point forward, the mayoral count fell out of sync.

The issue went largely unnoticed until the early 20th century, when New York City began publishing a numbered list of mayors in its Official Directory, commonly known as the Green Book. Compilers of the directory missed Nicolls’ second term and incorrectly listed his successor, William Dervall, as the eighth mayor.

As a result, the numbering of every mayor from Dervall onward has been off by one.

The error resurfaced in the 1980s after a historical editor discovered the missing Minutes of the Mayor’s Court from 1674 in the custody of the Manhattan County Clerk. In 1989, historian Peter Christoph wrote that then-Mayor Ed Koch had actually been New York City’s 106th mayor, not the 105th.

Despite those findings, the official count was never corrected and continued through outgoing Mayor Eric Adams.

Mamdani, who won the Nov. 4 election and is set to take office on New Year’s Day, initially said he was excited to become the city’s 111th mayor. He has since said he is just as happy to be sworn in as the 112th.

Mamdani will be the first Muslim and first person of South Asian heritage elected to the office.