(The Mayor was not elected until 1834.) William Paulding had preceded him in the office, and William Paulding succeeded him in 1827.

But the Hone administration was long remembered on account of its civic excellence and its social dignity.

For more than thirty years he served gratuitously the city's first Bank of Savings, which was established in 1816, and in 1841 he became its president.

Governor of the New York Hospital, trustee of the Bloomingdale Asylum, founder of the Clinton Hall Association, and of the Mercantile Library, trustee of Columbia College, of the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, president of the American Exchange Bank, and of the Glenham Manufacturing Company, vice-president of the Institution for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, of the American Seamen's Fund Society, of the New York Historical Society, of the Fuel Saving Society, a director in the Matteawan Cotton and Machine Company, the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company, the Eagle Fire Insurance Company, the National Insurance Company, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, a manager of the Literary and Philosophical Society, of the Mechanic and Scientific Association, a founder and a governor of the Union Club, and a vestryman of Trinity Church--the wonder is that he found time to write in his Diary at all.

According to Bayard Tuckerman, who edited the Diary and wrote the Introduction to it, an ordinary day's work for Hone was "to ride out on horseback to the Bloomingdale Asylum, to return and pass the afternoon at the Bank for Savings, thence to attend a meeting of the Trinity Vestry, or to preside over the Mercantile Library Association." "He was never," said Mr.
Tuckerman, "voluntarily absent from a meeting where the interest of others demanded his presence, and many were the good dinners he lost in consequence." Again: "He had personal gifts which extended the influence due to his character.