Walking the Streets of New Amsterdam

Prior to the Dutch, the tip of lower Manhattan was known to the Lenape as Kapsee “the sharp rock place.” It had been used probably for hundreds of years as a meeting place and trade location for the various tribes of the region. Tribes from Long Island, New Jersey and Upstate New York all came here to trade. And so, it is appropriate that the Museum of the American Indian is housed in the Customs House.Incidentally, the name Manhattan comes from Manna-hata, a Munsee word for “the place where we get bows.”We are starting at this point because where the Customs’ House now stands was Fort Amsterdam, constructed 400 years ago in 1625. This was the first settlement the Dutch made on the island of Manhattan, although the colonists had first settled in 1624 on Nutten Island, which we know as Governor’s Island. Prior to that, in 1609, Henry Hudson claimed the area for the Dutch in his ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon).In 1614 the Dutch built their first settlement upstate in Albany, which they called Beverwijck. And that name gives a clue as to why the Dutch were here. Beaver pelts, which were made into water-proof felted-fur hats for Europeans. Albany was the center of the beaver trade, but the Dutch needed a protected deep-water port such as this to ship the goods to Amsterdam. In return the Dutch sent back goods and supplies for the colonists and to trade with the native population.At first, Fort Amsterdam was crude, with earthen walls, but eventually it contained a church, a garrison, a house for the director, a prison, and a warehouse. It was used to house the entire population during Kieft’s War in 1643, when the Lenape counter-attacked the Dutch after a massacre by colonists.In 1626, the so called “purchase” of Manhattan occurred. No such deed exists, but Peter Schagen wrote a letter to the States General saying it was purchased by Peter Minuit on November 5, 1626 for goods and sewant (wampum) worth 60 guilders. Converted in the 19th century to dollars, a historian arrived at the figure of $24. However, the Lenape did not have the same ideas of property ownership as Europeans and most likely saw the agreement as a treaty for mutual use of the area, setting up decades of conflict.By 1655 smallpox and other diseases, along with war, had decimated the native populations.In 1628, the Dutch started construction on the first windmill on the island near State Street and Battery Place. This was for grinding grain, and a second mill nearby was a sawmill.Broadway itself predates the Dutch by perhaps thousands of years. It was an Indian trail that ran the length of the island and led upstate, called the Wickquasgeck Trail. The Dutch called it de Heere Straat or Gentleman’s Street.To the east, behind 2 Broadway, is a small alley named Marketfield Street. It used to extend all the way to Broadway, and as the name suggests it was here in this common area where the Dutch established a public market by 1658. Further down on Whitehall Street was a cattle market and open-air slaughterhouse.Before we leave, you might want to take note of the fence around Bowling Green Park. This area was common ground in New Amsterdam. In 1773 it was officially made a park, and in 1771 the English common council erected this cast iron fence. If you run your hands across the top of the posts, you will see that they are roughly chopped off. These posts were capped with crowns and in the park was a statue of King George III on horseback. In 1776, patriots hacked off the crowns and destroyed the statue, melting it down for bullets.

Why is this Street named Bridge Street? And why is Broad Street so broad?In the 1640s the Dutch expanded an existing stream and created the first canal in Manhattan. It went from the river to Beaver Street where it branched out to the west. The canal was built to drain a swampy area north of Beaver Street, but also because the Dutch wanted to remake their colony in the New World in the image of their home capital of Amsterdam.First called the Common Ditch, the canal was later named the Heere Graft, or Gentleman’s Canal. It had two wooden bridges crossing it, one here and one at Stone Street.At Marketfield Street there was a dock for unloading goods bound for the market.The canal eventually became an open-air sewer and the English filled it in in 1676.

This area was excavated in 1979 and the remains of the walls of the Lovelace Tavern were discovered. Lovelace was the second English Governor of New York. So, this is not quite a Dutch house although some Dutch bricks were found by archeologists. Where the yellow stones are set in the pavement are the rough outlines of the Stadt Huys, the Dutch City Hall. It too had been a tavern, built in 1641, and in 1653, when the Dutch were given permission to form a municipal government, General Stuyvesant and the Dutch Council of Burgomasters and Schepens, declared that the City Tavern would henceforth be the City Hall.After the English takeover in 1664 it remained as the City Hall until in 1697, when the Stadt Huys was declared unsafe and so they moved next door to the Lovelace Tavern while a new City Hall was constructed on Wall Street.So, the Lovelace Tavern was for a short time the second City Hall of New York.The Dutch called this street the Strand, or the wael (riverbank). The river would have been just on the other side of the road, and eventually the Dutch built up a bulkhead from the canal to Hanover Square, and called this de Waal Straat, which does not mean Wall Street. It means Dock Street, which is what the English later called it. This has caused no end of confusion over the years, but the Dutch never called Wall Street by that name.Pearl Street originally referred to just the portion from State Street to Whitehall Street, named for the crushed oyster shells that covered it.

Where the school now stands was the House of the Enslaved Workers, built before 1643. Slavery was introduced into the colony of New Amsterdam in 1627 with the arrival of 22 Africans captured from a Portuguese ship. While most enslaved people were held by private citizens on farms, we know that the Dutch West India Company held 25 (probably only listing adult males) in 1653. Many were initially kept further north around Kips Bay where they did the heavy work of logging and clearing land for farms, but those engaged in work in town lived here in a small house with a garden to grow their own food. In 1664, the arrival of the Gideon with 290 Angolan Slaves greatly expanded the enslaved population of the city.To the right, where Luke’s Lobster is, was the first purpose-built synagogue in North America. It was built after the Dutch period in 1730, but by the first Jewish congregation in New Amsterdam, Shearith Israel. They formed in 1654 with the arrival of Asser Levy and 23 Jewish refugees from Brazil. General Stuyvesant at first did not welcome the Jewish emigrants, which led to them petitioning the States General in 1655 for permission to remain and become citizens. The Dutch government agreed, which was an important milestone in establishing the idea of freedom of religion in the New World. Continuing northeast on South William Street you will see some Dutch revival houses built in the early 1900s, but the houses in New Amsterdam would not have been nearly so grand.

Stone Street was originally called Brewers Street (Breuers Straet) further west, and High Street (Hoogh Straet) in this portion. Brewers held a lot of wealth and power in New Amsterdam, as Stuyvesant once complained “one full fourth of the City of New Amsterdam has been turned into taverns.” The brewers petitioned to pave the street and funded it with their own money. In 1658 it became the first paved street in New Amsterdam.

We are now on Het Cingel, “the belt.” The Dutch named it after the original outer wall and canal of Amsterdam. Starting at Hanover Square and crossing the city at Wall Street was yes, the defensive wall of the city. In 1653, the Dutch and English were in the midst of the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652-1654). In New England, English troops were amassing and rumors of this reached the small colony of New Amsterdam. Against this backdrop, New Amsterdam formed its first city government. Soon after, on March 13, 1653, an emergency meeting brought together the Director General (Petrus Stuyvesant), his Council, and the Court of Burgomasters and Schepens. The following point was discussed:“Upon reading the letters from the Lords Directors [of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam] and the last received current news from New England concerning the preparations there for either defense or attack, which is unknown to us, it is generally resolved:First. The burghers [a type of citizen] of this City shall stand guard in full squads overnight…Second. It is considered highly necessary, that Fort Amsterdam be repaired and strengthened.Third. Considering said Fort Amsterdam cannot hold all the inhabitants nor defend all the houses and dwellings in the City, it is deemed necessary to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork….”Although enslaved workers would most likely have done much of the heavy work, such as cutting and moving the lumber, in April it was ordered that “the citizens without exception, shall work on the constructions… by immediately digging a ditch from the East River to the North River, 4 to 5 feet deep and 11 to 12 feet wide.” This dry ditch would have formed part of the defensive works. The wall was finished by July 28th but not used. The construction of the wall was meant to be a stockade fence, but this proved too expensive and so a sort of plank wall with bulwarks was built instead. At the present intersection of Pearl Street and Wall Street was the Water Gate, allowing passage along the riverbank. Later in the 1600s the English built a market for grains here called the Meal Market. In 1711, the City Council also designated this market as the place for hiring or selling enslaved Africans or Indians. The first slave market in the City.

The First Anglo-Dutch war was the reason to build the wall in 1653. But it was also used as a defense against the native population. It was damaged in 1655, during a coordinated attack by several tribes in what was called the Peach War. After this the wall was rebuilt and expanded to include a wing down the Hudson River side.During the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War, on September 6, 1664, the Dutch colonists surrendered the city to the English, who renamed the city New York. They immediately went about improving the wall, but failed to upkeep it. In 1667, the Treaty of Breda resolved the 2nd Anglo-Dutch War and allowed the English to keep New York, but that was not the end of hostilities. In 1673, during the 3rd Anglo-Dutch War, New York was seized by Dutch privateers. They rebuilt the wall enlarging the bulwarks into two massive stone structures named Hollandia and Zeelandia after their warships. The war ended in 1674, and the Dutch returned the City to the English, but the wall remained.The 1695 Miller Plan shows the layout of the City at that time. Even well into the English era, the Street along it was called “Het Cingel or the City Wall.” The wall was becoming useless though as the City had expanded far beyond it. In 1699, the council passed a resolution to tear down the wall and use the stones to build a new City Hall, here. After the American Revolution this City Hall became the first seat of American government and it is where George Washington was inaugurated. However, that is not this building. That building was demolished in 1812, when the new City Hall was built, and the current Federal Hall was built in 1842 as a custom house and later used as a subtreasury.

The main gate to the City was on Broadway, with a bulwark and a guardhouse on the east side. Where Trinity Church now stands was the Company Garden. In 1751 church workers digging in the southwest corner of Trinity Churchyard discovered part of the wall, which may have been part of the western bastion known as Oyster Pasty Mount.

Broadway in the Dutch time did not follow its current path, it turned along Park Row to the east. Why? Because a giant swamp from Worth Street to Spring Street blocked the western side of the island. This swamp was later drained by the Canal that gives that Street its name. Park Row was then the lower portion of Bowerie (Bowery), which runs to Astor Place and Stuyvesant Square. Bowerie is Dutch for farm, for along this road were the great Dutch farms that fed the population. After the English takeover Stuyvesant retired to his farm at the end of this road.People often think that Wall Street was the border of New Amsterdam, but that was just where they put the wall. The 1653 records of New Amsterdam show that the court was given legislative authority “between the two rivers to the Fresh Water.” This refers to the Collect and Little Collect Ponds, which were in the valley just north of Chambers Street. The Collect Pond (corrupted from the Dutch word Kolch) was the main source of New Amsterdam’s and early New York’s drinking water. Another windmill built by the Dutch was once where the Municipal Building now stands.Here at Chambers Street, there was one more wall, a stockade fence that ran across the island. The English built it in 1745 to protect the City from the French and it lasted until 1763. It was built here, not just because this was high ground, but because this was still considered the edge of the city. This is also why the African Burial Ground was in the low area below here, outside the wall. But before the African Burial Ground, and before the Dutch, where Foley Square is now, was Werpoes, a Lenape Village, built next to the Collect and Little Collect Ponds.

The City’s Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS) has opened a new exhibit: “New Visions of Old New York.” Created in collaboration with the New Amsterdam History Center, the exhibit features a touchscreen with an interactive 3-D map describing places and people in New Amsterdam. It uses records from the Municipal Archives and Library to illustrate the presence of women, indigenous people and enslaved people.The exhibit is located in the gallery at 31 Chambers Street and will run throughout 2025. It is open to the public Monday to Friday 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. except holidays.