He said Gracie Mansion, the official residence of New York City’s mayor, was haunted and that the minerals in the city’s bedrock infused it with a special energy. He promised to bring “swagger” back to the city and he somehow mentioned the Sept. 11 attacks in the same breath as the opening of a new business.
Mayor Eric Adams will be remembered as part showman, part comedian, who was likely to say just about anything, even if he was met with derision or his critics questioned the decorum or wisdom of his utterances. And he often fired off statements with an unflinching verve.
“If you’re going to hang out with the boys at night, you have to get up with the men in the morning,” he said often while answering questions about his love of the city’s nightlife.
While politics attracts its share of raconteurs, with Mayor Adams it was hard to predict when a routine news conference would deliver an instant meme. It happened so often that the unpredictable became commonplace.
“Part of Eric Adams’s downfall is what made him the 110th mayor of New York City: He is his own person,” said Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University. “There is a certain level of freedom that some people appreciated but that a lot of people bristled at.”
On Sunday, Mr. Adams, sitting on a staircase in Gracie Mansion, announced by video that he would abandon his faltering re-election campaign. Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” played softly in the background and an enlarged photo of the mayor’s late mother was propped next to him.
There’s no question that Mr. Adams did and said things his way. Here’s a look at some of his most memorable comments during his time as mayor.
New York City is the _____ of America.
Hours after meeting Pope Francis last year, Mr. Adams stood in a piazza in Rome and spoke a phrase that has become his trademark: “New York is the Rome of America.”
It wasn’t the first time that Mr. Adams had compared New York City to other places, but no other mayor has done it in a way that has spawned dozens of memes.
The mayor’s comparisons were usually uttered at the many flag-raising ceremonies he has hosted or at cultural events. Mr. Adams noted a resemblance between New York and more than a dozen cities across the globe — mostly capitals, including Athens; Kyiv, Ukraine; Lima, Peru; and Seoul.
Sometimes the comparisons seemed odd, like when he called New York the Islamabad of America at one flag-raising ceremony. At another, he said it was the Zagreb of America.
Mr. Adams said the remarks were his way of highlighting the diversity of New York City and demonstrating his outreach to groups of people traditionally ignored by City Hall.
Still, a comparison that would raise many eyebrows occurred in October 2023, when Mr. Adams said “New York is the Istanbul of America” at a flag-raising event for Turkey. A few weeks later, a federal corruption investigation into Mr. Adams burst into public view after the home of his chief fund-raiser was raided as authorities examined his ties to Turkey.
In a five-count indictment in September 2024, federal prosecutors accused Mr. Adams of being part of a bribery scheme to solicit illegal campaign contributions from Turkish officials, making him the first sitting mayor in modern New York City history to be charged with a crime.
The ghosts of Gracie
Before Mr. Adams was elected mayor in 2021, there were questions about whether he lived in Brooklyn, as he claimed, or in New Jersey, where he also owns a home. Mr. Adams even gave reporters a tour of his townhouse in Brooklyn to try to prove that he lived there.
Once he took office, Mr. Adams made it clear that Gracie Mansion would be his primary home. But there was a problem, the mayor soon revealed.
Gracie Mansion was haunted.
“I don’t care what anyone says; there are ghosts in there, man,” Mr. Adams said during an interview with announcers for the Yankees in May 2022. Almost a year later, Mr. Adams was sticking to the story. During an interview with WCBS, Marcia Kramer asked the mayor if it was creepy to live in the mansion.
“People think I’m joking, but there’s a ghost that runs around here,” Mr. Adams said with a chuckle. The mayor went on to explain that there was “an energy” about the mansion, which is more than 200 years old.
Elizabeth Walcott-Gracie, the daughter-in-law of the home’s architect, died in the mansion in 1819 and some believe she haunts it still. Chirlane McCray, the wife of former Mayor Bill de Blasio, lived in Gracie Mansion during his two terms and also found it a bit spooky.
“I’ve never seen her, but there are times when doors open and close by themselves, and the floorboards creak as though someone is walking through the rooms,” Ms. McCray said about the ghost of Walcott-Gracie in a 2017 Halloween interview.
Turning haters into waiters
Being mayor of New York City comes with much criticism. Mr. Adams said none of it bothered him.
Among Mr. Adams’s most quotable moments came, however, when he addressed his critics in a quintessentially Eric Adams way.
“All I know is all my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success,” the mayor said during a news conference in 2023.
After Mr. Adams was indicted, the news site Hell Gate created a guide to Mr. Adams’s inner circle, which included people who were under indictment or investigation. It was called “The Eric Adams Table of Success.”
Out with the boys but up with the men
When Mr. Adams was elected, New York City was still recovering from pandemic shutdowns. The city that never sleeps was snoring, he said.
“We used to be the coolest place on the globe,” Mr. Adams said as mayor-elect on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show in November 2021. “We’re so damn boring now.”
Mr. Adams had celebrated his victory by partying, first at the private club Zero Bond in Manhattan, which he exited after 1 a.m. on election night. From there he went to a second nightlife spot and then to another lounge in Brooklyn.
Mr. Adams, who declared that his “swagger” would help bring the city back, said that by enjoying the nightlife he was doing his part to “test the product.” But how could he handle his demanding job if he was out late clubbing on a Wednesday?
“If you’re going to hang out with the boys at night,” Mr. Adams said, “you’ve got to get up with the men in the morning, and I’m up 5 a.m. every morning.”
From 9/11 to a new business
Asked to sum up, in one word, how eventful 2023 had been during a year-end television interview, Mr. Adams did more than that. In a description for the ages, Mr. Adams characterized the unpredictability of New York City in a way that was unique to him.
“This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center to a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open,” Mr. Adams said.
The remark drew disbelief, with some criticizing it as insensitive, but Mr. Adams insisted that he had meant to honor New York’s resiliency and complexity.
“I’m authentic,” Mr. Adams said when asked about the comments, “and I’m going to talk the way New Yorkers talk.”
Jeffery C. Mays is a Times reporter covering politics with a focus on New York City Hall.
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