NEW (NIEUW) AMSTERDAM

The Dutch city of Nieuw (New) Amsterdam was most of all a city of commerce and a trading center.  It was also a city of immigrants, and a city of tolerance toward religion, different races, and nations.  Commerce, making money, and being financially successful were important to the Dutch and they welcomed refugees with the belief that all people could work together.  The legacy of this Dutch heritage would influence the character of the City of New York and of the country that America would become.  

In 1624, Dutch settlers of the West India Company arrived on the ship Nieu Nederlandt (New Netherland) and first settled on an island they called Noten Eylant (Nut Island, now Governors Island).  They were 30 families of French-speaking Walloons escaping religious persecution.  Some were sent to outposts in upstate New York and along the Delaware and Connecticut rivers.  Eight men were left at the southern tip of Manhattan ("Mannahatta" meaning "hilly island") to build a fort they called Fort Amsterdam.   

Manhattan was a vast forest full of oak, maple, cedar, pine, walnut and chestnut trees, salt meadows, and blackberry, raspberry and strawberry bushes.   According to Eric W. Sanderson, author of Mannahatta A Natural History of New York, the island of Mannahatta "had more ecological communities per acre than Yellowstone, more native plant species than Yosemite, and more birds than the Great Smokey Mountains National Park."  Early explorers described the island’s beauty as “curiously bedecked with Roses, and an innumerable multitude of delightful flowers,” including a variety of orchids.  Beavers, deer, black bears, wolves, mink, turkeys, and even bisson and bobcats filled the forests.  Oysters and fish were plentiful in the rivers.  Reed marshes surrounded the island and the Mohawk tribe called it "Ganono" or "place of reeds." 

The popular story about the Dutch purchasing Manhattan* from the Lenape tribe for 60 guilders, which was actually equal to several hundred dollars, is only one version of that story.  Some historians think the indigenous people of Mannahatta believed they were leasing, not selling, the land.  A more intriguing version claims the Lenape tribe did not actually own the island and only used it for hunting and fishing.  Which story is true will never be known.  There are estimates that approximately 15,000 of the Lenape tribe or "the common people" were in the New Amsterdam area before Europeans arrived.  They called their land "Lenapehoking" or "where the Lenapes dwell."  They were a nomadic people who spoke the Algonquian language.  

The Dutch built one-story wood houses, based on the style of their homes in Holland, with steep straw roofs, two rooms, and large brass knockers shaped like a dog or lion's head.  Author Edward Robb Ellis describes the Dutch houses as having:  "a steep flight of steps to the front doors.  In warm weather the stoop served as the family's gathering place, pipe-smoking men keeping their eyes on their neighbors' weathercocks, mothers shelling peas, and children shouting across the narrow streets."  Houses might have both vegetable and flower gardens.  Tile roofs would later replace straw ones to prevent the spreading of fires from from flying chimney sparks.  

New Amsterdam's residents included fur traders, carpenters, blacksmiths, coopers, brickmakers, tailors, merchants, shoemakers as well as soldiers, sailors, trappers, members of the Lenape tribe, and enslaved people.  Commerce and business were very important to the Dutch and the leaders of New Amsterdam.  Dutch women were well educated, independent, trained in commerce, allowed to participate in business, and treated equally.  Eleven African men were first brought from Africa as enslaved people in 1626 and three African women in 1628.  A slave quarters was built in 1639 at the East River across from Hog Island (now Roosevelt Island).  Enslaved persons would build much of New Amsterdam and many important buildings such as the first City Hall, the city prison and hospital, the first churches, schools, and Fraunces Tavern).   

Fort Amsterdam was constructed just south of Bowling Green where the Museum of American Indians (once the Alexander Hamilton Custom House) stands today.   The Fort contained the Governor's House, a jail, a stone church, officers' quarters and barracks.  Wind-driven windmills and windmills driven by horses were erected near the Fort.   A market place, brewery, church and mill formed the town centre by the 1630s.   

By 1639 Dutch plantations lined the East River where ships were anchored.  Around 1640, the original trading post of New Amsterdam had grown into a settlement colony.  One in four of buildings was a tavern where both men and women gathered.  Dutch taverns did more than serve beer, brandy, and imported Holland gin.  They rented rooms and provided entertainment such as gambling, billiards, shuffleboard, puppet shows, concerts, cock-fights, and dog-fights.  In 1642 a five story city tavern, Stadts Herbergh, was built.  This popular tavern housed seamen and was designated as the city's first City Hall in 1653 by Governor Peter Stuyvesant.  It faced the East River overlooking the Great Dock, a wharf at Whitehall Street.  The local government and the Council of Legislators met there.  Courts, a school, a firehouse and a jail were also located there.  Other popular taverns were the Lovelace Tavern (1697), Spread Eagle (at Whitehall Street), and The King's Head (on Pearl Street).       

Picture New York Harbor as a thriving port brimming with ships and the silhouettes of their masts and sails.   Imagine New Amsterdam as a city with unpaved or cobblestone streets full of horses, carriages and stagecoaches.  Stone Street, originally named Brewer Street for the breweries that lined it, became the first paved city street in 1657 or 1658 and by 1661 all main roads were cobblestone.  The town had a church, a bakery, a midwife's house, a brewhouse, a home for orphans (1656), a sawmill, a shed for building boats, a police force (1658), a prison, a  hospital (1658), a market, a post office, a wooden wharf at Whitehall and Pearl Streets, and even a Latin school.   

Pigs, the city's sanitation department, ate street garbage and livestock roamed the streets.  A typical street might be lined with wooden-framed houses, shops of various kinds, boarding houses, and highly popular taverns.  There were oyster saloons, beer saloons, ladies of the night and pickpockets, and dance halls with fiddlers who would play a tune for a small fee.  The main street was the Strand which was later renamed Pearl Street because of the mother-of-pearl shells left there by the tides.  In 1653, a 2,340 foot wall of oak posts with sharp tips was constructed between the East River and the North (Hudson) River at what is now Wall Street.   

The economy of New Amsterdam was driven by the sale of beaver pelts, tobacco, and corn.  Images of tobacco leaves and stalks of corn can be found on the marble engravings of early city buildings as well as acorns and pineapples motifs (the latter symbolizing hospitality).

New Amsterdam had a small fire department equipped with large leather water buckets and ladders.  A fire warden/watchman was stationed atop City Hall.  Policemen and night watchmen patrolled the streets with rattles that they shook to signal they were approaching and also called out the hour of the day.  In the evenings "when there is no moon," residents were required to have street candles, mounted in a lamp or lantern, lit at every seventh house.  Whale oil lamps would replace the candle ones and gas lamps (on cast-iron posts) were introduced in 1825 but only in Manhattan below Canal Street.  The remainder of the city was still lit by candles.   

By 1643 Manhattan's population was estimated to be between 400 and 500 and by 1664, when the British took over, the population had increased to 1500.  By the year 1783, the city’s boundaries ran from Battery Park (the southernmost point) to the area which is now City Hall (the northernmost point).  A walk through the City would have been a short one.  

A map of New Amsterdam in 1660 shows Fort Amsterdam, the Dutch West India Company farm, public cow pastures, a tobacco plantation, the Common and the Swamp, a poor house, and the Tavern of Wolfert Webber.     

A natural marsh separated downtown New Amsterdam from the rich farmlands of Greenwich Village, two miles north where tobacco was grown.  Greenwich Street connected lower Manhattan to Greenwich Village which was considered to be “the country” and became a refuge for many New Yorkers during a yellow fever epidemic in 1822.  

Much of New Amsterdam burned down in the Great Fire of New York on September 21, 1776, which was suspected to have been started at the Fighting Cocks Tavern (on Whitehall Slip) by American patriot arsonists after British troops, led by General William Howe, occupied New York City on September 15, 1776. 

A 1975 excavation in the financial district found the only physical remains of New Amsterdam, part of the foundation of the Lovelace Tavern, built at 85 Broad Street in 1670.  The sidewalk has been covered in glass and named the "Portal Down to Old New York."  The most visible bits of old New Amsterdam in today's Manhattan are "the irregular layout of lower Manhattan's streets and some Dutch street-names," according to Eric Homberger, author of The Historical Atlas of NEW YORK CITY A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History.  Angolized Dutch names, such as Prince Straet, Paerel Straet (Pearl Street), Breede Weg (Broadway), Bever Straet (Beaver Street), Brugh Straet (Bridge Street), Brouwer Straet, and the Wall (now Wall Street), still remain.  There is also a Dutch-American Heritage Day on November 16th.     

There are no remaining Dutch-styled buildings in Manhattan.  Examples of Dutch architecture can be found in the other boroughs and in upstate New York.  Some are the Dyckman Farmhouse Museum in the Bronx, Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, the Reformed Church of Flatbush Cemetery in Queens, and Vander-Ender-Onderdock House in Flushings, Queens.  Historic Stone Street, the first cobblestone street in New Amsterdam, and the restored 18th Century houses at the South Street Seaport Museum are pictured above.    

On August 26, 1664, a British's fleet of ships captured New Amsterdam without firing one single shot.  The British changed New Amsterdam's name to New York (meaning "place at the water") in honor of the Duke of York the brother of England's King Charles II.  

Note:  Dates about the establishment of New Amsterdam vary and are not precise.  For more information, go to The New Netherland Research Center, created by Dr. Charles Gehring to collect and publish documents and papers from early New Amsterdam and New Netherland, and the New Amsterdam History Center.  The Lenape Center, located in Manhattan, is devoted to the history of the Lenape tribe with a mission of "continuing Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland through community, culture, and the arts."  The Epic of New York City by Edward Robb Ellis, Exploring Historic Dutch New York by Gajus Schelterma and Heleen Westerhuijs, and GOTHAM A History of New York City to 1898 by Edwin G. Burrows are excellent sources. 

*Historians have found the word "Manhattan" spelled in almost 50 different ways.