Maybe ‘Mad Men’ Lawyers Knew More Than Lindsay’s

David A. Grossman, a Lindsay-era budget official, moved to Queens against his initial wishes because of a residency requirement that might not have applied to him after all.

Last week, we reported that the “Mad Men” character Henry Francis’s new job as a deputy mayor of New York City did not put him at odds with residency laws, because the city had no such laws in 1967 and 1968, when the new season of “Mad Men” is set.

But then we heard from David A. Grossman, who was hired as a (nonfictional) assistant budget director under Mayor John V. Lindsay in that era.

Mr. Grossman told us that his plan to live in New Jersey had been thwarted by the city’s head lawyer, Corporation Counsel Lee Rankin, who advised him that the City Charter dictated that he live in New York City. Mr. Grossman and his wife settled on a house in Forest Hills, Queens.

City Room, perplexed, reopened its investigation.

Stephen Louis, an avid “Mad Men” watcher who also happens to be the present chief of the legal counsel division in the city’s Law Department, provided us some clarification, though it applies more to Henry Francis than to Mr. Grossman.

While New York City had no residency laws for its employees in 1967, the state’s longstanding public officers law does require officials to live in the districts or municipalities they represent. The state law doesn’t clearly define who is and isn’t a public officer, but in New York City, elected officials like the mayor and city agency heads who have “legally defined powers and responsibilities” fall into that category, Mr. Louis said.

Someone like Henry Francis, a high-ranking official whose powers aren’t set in statute, would not have been considered a public officer, Mr. Louis said. “He’s not a commissioner; he probably negotiates stuff for the mayor,” he said. Ross Sandler, the founding director of New York Law School’s Center for New York City Law, told us substantially the same thing.

Score one for “Mad Men”’s historical accuracy, which took a hit this week when the Joan Harris character offered to make a reservation at Le Cirque, which did not open until 1974.

Both Mr. Louis and Mr. Sandler were stumped, however, by the tale of Mr. Grossman. An assistant budget director would not have been considered a public officer in 1966, Mr. Louis said. Lee Rankin, the city lawyer who made the decision, is deceased, so the logic behind his decision is lost to time.

As it turned out, Forest Hills was not such a picnic for the Grossmans. One evening, as they tried to host a dinner party, their neighbors picketed outside their house in opposition to Mayor Lindsay’s plans to build public housing in the neighborhood. (One of their invited guests, a Fire Department analyst, was detained by the police after a detective deemed him too short to credibly work for the Fire Department, Mr. Grossman recalled.)

We shared our findings with Mr. Grossman, who informed his wife, Hanna Grossman, after all these years, that perhaps the city had erred when it blocked them from moving into their New Jersey dream home.

“When I told her about this,” he said, “she hit the roof.”