On October 27, 1877, Kane was elected Mayor of the City of Baltimore having won the Democratic nomination over Ferdinand C. Latrobe, (1833–1911), (grandson of famed architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe, (1764–1820), son of civic activist, lawyer artist and author John H. B. Latrobe, and nephew of Benjamin Henry Latrobe II, (1806–1878), noted chief engineer and architect, with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad). Kane was Mayor of Baltimore City but a short time (his then two-year term would have ended November 3, 1879). City Council ordinances receiving his signed approval were not numerous. One appropriated money for repairs to the former Old City Hall on Holliday Street near East Saratoga Street, used 1830–1875, (former Peale Museum built and operated 1813–1830 by the famed Rembrandt Peale, [1778–1860]), and transferred this historic building to the City's Board of School Commissioners for the Baltimore City Public Schools system to be used for school purposes. It soon became the site of Baltimore's first African American (then referred to as "Colored"/"Negro") in the new racially segregated "Colored Schools" established a few years before to the BCPS in 1865. Another Kane-signed ordinance was to give "Authority to condemn and open Wolfe Street from East Monument Street to North Avenue and Patterson Park Avenue from Oliver Street to North Avenue" and was granted. A Council resolution to appoint a committee to visit and urge upon the United States Congress the necessity of constructing a new post-office was approved by Mayor Kane and also an ordinance to accept Homewood Park (a part of the present site of Johns Hopkins University—near Homewood Mansion, a Georgian/Federal style of architecture, constructed 1801–1808, formerly of the Carroll family and later William Wyman's "Wyman Villa" estates) which was signed April 8, 1878. This ordinance, however, was not carried into effect at that time, as JHU did not move from its newly established "temporary" downtown campus on North Howard Street near Little Ross, West Centre and West Monument Streets until after the turn of the century. Colonel George Proctor Kane died, while serving as the Mayor of his home city, on June 23, 1878. His former opponent, Ferdinand C. Latrobe was elected to serve his unexpired term (and began his own long and honored public service career, being elected to seven terms of office and dominating the political life of Baltimore for a quarter-century).