Zohran Mamdani has already printed the invitations: “Inauguration of the 111th Mayor of New York City, January 1, 2026.” They sit in cardboard boxes at Queens campaign headquarters, ready to be slipped into envelopes stamped with a brand-new city seal. Yet three miles south, in a dim vault beneath the Surrogate’s Courthouse, a historian named Paul Hortenstine is holding a faded sheet of parchment that may force the print shop to burn the plates and start over.
The paper is a 1675 warrant signed by Governor Edmund Andros commanding “Matthias Nicolls, Esq., Mayor of this City of New York,” to collect dock fees. Nothing strange—except that the city’s official roster says Nicolls left office in 1672 and did not return until 1682. Somewhere between quill and typewriter, Nicolls’s brief second term vanished. When clerks compiled the first municipal manual in 1841, they copied the gap, and every almanac, textbook, and inauguration program since has repeated it. The result: New York has been off by one mayor for 184 years.
Hortenstine stumbled on the discrepancy while combing colonial records for ties to the early slave trade. “I actually dropped the folder,” he admits. “When I picked it up, this warrant was staring at me. I thought, ‘Wait—Nicolls again?’ My heart started racing like I’d found a missing lottery ticket.” He cross-checked council minutes, port ledgers, even a 1676 property deed that lists Nicolls signing as “chief magistrate.” The paper trail is thin but consistent: a two-year encore nobody counted.
City archivists have quietly conceded the find. “We’re aware of the research and are reviewing it,” said Ken Cobb, assistant commissioner of records, sounding like a man who just discovered the family Bible left out a whole sibling. If officials accept the correction, every ordinal since Mayor James Duane in 1784 slides forward by one. Eric Adams becomes the 110th, not 109th. Bill de Blasio turns into 109 instead of 108. And Zohran Mamdani—millennial, Muslim, progressive phenom—becomes the 112th mayor of New York, erasing the triple-one symbolism his team loved.
Inside the transition office, staffers joke about “Mayor 112” merch and whether the extra digit will fit on the podium. Mamdani himself laughs it off: “If my biggest crisis is renumbering, we’re off to a good start.” But the discovery stings a little; the campaign branded itself “111 for 1” (one city, one future). Slogans aside, the bigger worry is logistical—updating websites, press kits, the bronze plaque that will hang in City Hall’s Blue Room. Inauguration planners have already asked the calligrapher to leave a tiny space before the final “1,” just in case.
Historians see a silver lining. “Correcting the record is healthier than clinging to error,” says Leslie Day, author of Manhattan Mayors. “Besides, 112 is a fine number—emergency digits that signal help is on the way.” For a city battered by pandemics, housing shortages, and endless subway delays, the symbolism feels apt. Whether 111th or 112th, Mamdani will take the oath beneath the same City Hall balcony where George Washington once stood. The parchment won’t care about the count; it only wants a signature promising faithful service.
Still, Hortenstine hopes the tweak happens fast. “History should be accurate before the cameras roll,” he says, sliding the 1675 warrant into an acid-free folder. “Otherwise we’re just passing yesterday’s typo to tomorrow’s students.” As for Matthias Nicolls—long dead, long forgotten—his ghost may finally get the credit he never sought: one quiet mayor who once collected dock fees, now poised to bump an entire city forward by a single, stubborn number.
