3. There are secret tunnels attached to the mansion

The land Gracie Mansion stands on, currently inside Carl Schurz Park, used to be called Hoorn’s Hook. It was owned by British Loyalist Jacob Walton who built his estate, The Belview, on the property in 1770. At the time, the only way to get to the estate was by boat, as the city was five miles away in Lower Manhattan and no roads or public transportation reached so far north yet. Walton, who was a wealthy merchant, also built tunnels underneath the home which led to the East River. According to our tour guide at Gracie Mansion, these tunnels could have been used for smuggling goods, but they were probably used as a passage to the water for residents who were not used to New York’s frigid winters.

When the Revolutionary War broke out, the Waltons escaped to Queens and George Washington’s troops turned the mansion into a colonial fortification. In the 1980s, while conducting an archeological dig at Gracie Mansion, archeologists found an over 12-pound cannonball in the mansion. The British cannonball is made of iron and now sits on the mantle of the mansion’s historic yellow room.