In “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville recounted his 1831 voyage to America:

When I arrived for the first time at New York, by that part of the Atlantic Ocean which is called the East River, I was surprised to perceive along the shore, at some distance from the city, a number of little palaces of white marble, several of which were of classic architecture. When I went the next day to inspect more closely one which had particularly attracted my notice, I found that its walls were of whitewashed brick, and its columns of painted wood. All the edifices that I had admired the night before were of the same kind.

At that time, “some distance from the city” – i.e., the Upper East Side – stood the country retreats of leading families like the Astors, the Rhinelanders, and the Crugers. And the Gracies.

The Scottish-born Archibald Gracie prospered as the owner of a fleet of merchant ships. His East River estate, which abutted that of his friend John Jacob Astor, comprised the northern section of the present Carl Schurz Park. His country house is the last standing of those that caught Tocqueville’s eye.

In 1942, at the instigation of Robert Moses, the house became the official residence of the mayor of New York City, at that time Fiorello La Guardia. Eight succeeding mayors moved in as though they had no choice. The present mayor, Michael Bloomberg, chose otherwise. And in some ways this has been a boon to New Yorkers. The house has undergone a splendid restoration under the Gracie Mansion Conservancy. You can even arrange to take tours of the house with the conservancy’s expert guides, including its director Diana Carroll, whose knowledge of the house and its artifacts is breathtaking.

For all the loveliness of the turn-of-the-19th-century house, what most impresses me is the architect Mott Schmidt’s 1966 addition, the Susan B. Wagner Wing. Within Carl Schurz Park, Gracie Mansion stands secluded behind a high fence and is difficult to see. Just off East End Avenue, at 88th Street, offers the only clear view of the mansion. Yet what you view is not the 200-year-old house but rather the 1966 wing by Schmidt. The viewer may well be forgiven for thinking it is part of the original house, for Schmidt designed his new wing in the style of the Federal period of New England architecture.

The wing came about when Mayor Wagner’s family tired of the ceremonial intrusions upon their living quarters. Generally, the press enthusiastically endorsed Schmidt’s Georgian solution. Yet I wonder if it would pass muster with today’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, which has approved such additions to historic buildings as the glass front on the Brooklyn Museum, the Modernist annex to the Harvard Club, and Norman Foster’s tower atop the Hearst Magazine Building.

For all preservationists’ handwringing about promoting an architecture “of our time,” is it not ironic that at least on its outside the Schmidt wing aesthetically excels the older house to which it is appended?