The last time a man in his 30s was mayor of New York City, ground had not yet been broken on what would become the world’s tallest building: the Empire State Building.
World War I was wreaking havoc on the cost and availability of food in the United States, which spawned a series of riots in the city.
That youthful chief executive, John Purroy Mitchel, was nicknamed the “Boy Mayor.” He was 34 years, 3 months and 16 days old when he won election in 1913.
Still, that’s nearly three months older than Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and state assemblyman who was elected the city’s 111th mayor on Tuesday.
Mr. Mamdani, who turned 34 on Oct. 18, will become the city’s youngest mayor since the 1898 consolidation that added Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island to New York City to create the five boroughs.
“There are some similarities between Mitchel and Mamdani in terms of their age and ambition and desire to shake things up,” said Lilly Tuttle, a curator at the Museum of the City of New York.
There have been 23 mayors in the post-consolidation era, averaging 50.7 years of age at the time of their election, according to the museum.
To find a New York City mayor younger than Mr. Mamdani, you have to go back to the 19th century: Hugh J. Grant was believed to have been 31 when he was inaugurated in 1889.
“I think it’s very fair to say that office was very different pre-consolidation,” Ms. Tuttle said. “You’re looking at a very different city.”
Grant belonged to Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that dominated the city for decades and was known for corruption.
Over the years, his age has been the subject of significant confusion, according to the New York Historical, which said it had found some compelling evidence — Grant’s mausoleum, death certificate and census information from a young age — that he might have been as young as 30 when elected.
In the 1913 election, Mitchel vowed that he would reform City Hall and root out corruption, winning a landslide as a Republican and fusion candidate. He was raised in the Bronx and his mother was partly of Spanish and Venezuelan descent.
Mitchel overwhelmingly lost his 1917 bid for re-election and was killed in a flight training accident while an officer with the Aviation Section of the Army Signal Corps in 1918.
Greg Young, a co-host of the “Bowery Boys,” a popular podcast about New York City history, said that Mr. Mamdani’s political ascent — he has presented himself as a clean break from business as usual — had some parallels with Mitchel’s. In September, the podcast rereleased a 2013 episode focusing on Mitchel.
“People get sick of Tammany Hall,” Mr. Young said. “People get sick of politics as is, so they put in this kind of reform mayor.”
Andy Newman contributed reporting.
Neil Vigdor covers breaking news for The Times, with a focus on politics.
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