Want to book a 1.5 hour Walking Tour exploring life in New Amsterdam while waking on the streets where the history occurred?
- During the 5 Dutch Days Tour in 2008.
This tour is given by Rick Landman, a Native New Yorker, living for 30+ years below Chambers Street, and is the quintessential New Amsterdamer; but is not Dutch. Back in 2008, Rick was asked to create a NewAmsterdam Walking Tour for "5 Dutch Days", and then again for the "Henry Hudson 400" program in 2009. This Tour grew into a program which incorporated much of Russell Shorto's book, (based on Charles Gehring's translations), "Dutch New York Histories, Connecting African, Native American and Slavery Heritage", by along with other sources. Did you know that:
- Our city was called "New Orange" in 1674?
- 17 languages were spoken?
- The slave auctions were held on Wall Street?
- Why Wall Street was erected?
- Jews and Quakers were eventually accepted?
- Juan Rodriguez greeted the first Dutch settlers?
- Capital punishment was for "gay"men?
- Native Americans were slaughtered under Governor Kieft?
- Native Americans had no concept of land ownership?
- Many of the streets, and street and town names are still being used?
- There were Mayors and Presidents with Dutch origins?
- NYC still uses the Dutch concept for tax lot shapes?
Past Groups
Here is a sample of some photos of the groups who took the Tour.
These groups are not only from public and private schools, but include Dutch social groups, colleges, a Law School from Utrecht, as well as family reunions who wanted to walk around the land that they ancestors actually owned. The Talk on the Tour can be individualized down to a simple tour called "BISCUITS OR COOKIES" for elementary school students, or expanded to explore the legal issues dealing with land ownership.
If it is not raining, we will meet at the base of Asia in front of the former U.S. Customs House on Bowling Green. (Current site of the Museum of the American Indian and former site of Fort Amsterdam.)
If there is a slight drizzle, we can meet here on the stairs and I will conduct a quick lecture and see if the weather changes. Heavy rain will cancel the tour.
Look up at the top of the former U.S. Customs House and you can see a Dutchman, Maarten Harpertszoon Tromp (b. 1598 Holland d. At Sea 1653), a famous Dutch admiral. At age 9, he became a sailor and at he joined the Dutch navy as a lieutenant in 1621. He became known in 1628 when as Piet Hein's flag captain, he helped capture the Spanish treasure fleet. In 1639, he blockaded and crushed a Spanish fleet in the Downs of the English Channel. This victory ended Spanish sea power. In June, 1652, he refused to lower his flag in deference to the English Admiral Robert Blake, and started the first of the Dutch Wars. That same year, he won control of the English Channel when he beat the English off Dungeness, but he was forced to withdraw. His inferior fleet lost 20 ships in a battle near Gabbard Shoal in 1653.
He then joined with his rival Witte de Witt and attacked the English off Scheveningenin in August of 1653. They were defeated and Tromp was killed in the battle by a sharpshooter. It was the last major conflict of the war. Tromp's death hurt the Dutch navy and hurt the Orange cause, which had sought to defeat England and restore the Stuart monarchy. One of his sons, Cornelis Tromp, became a Rear Admiral in the Dutch navy.
The sculpture is by Louis Saint-Gaudens.
Flagpole honoring the 350th anniversary of New Amsterdam in Battery Park.
Be careful where you step... We will see the sidewalk with the engraving over the ticker tape parade for Queen Juliana of the Netherlands' visit to NYC in 1952.
Wording on the base of the flagpole about the "purchase" of Manhattan Island.
Also on the base of the flagpole, commemorating the real property transaction of the Native Americans and Peter Minuit. We will discuss whether an actual contract or deed was ever contemplated and if a "meeting of the minds" actually occurred. Was the Native American advised by counsel as to what the Dutch man saying? What if the Native American thought that he was getting a gift of trinkets in order to welcome a new tribe into his community or to become a trading partner, etc.?
The current Street Names still reflect the activities of New Amsterdam. Stone Street (where the brewery was built and the street was paved with cobble stones) was made of stone, and Bridge Street passed over a creek, Bowling Green was the public area, Beaver was one of the major economic products, Pearl Street was the waterfront at the time and was where people went pearling. Words like cookies or boss, places like Brooklyn, Bronx, Yonkers, Gansevoort, Harlem, Utrecht, Staten Island, and characters like Santa Claus all have Dutch roots, let alone family names like Vanderbilt, Roosevelt, Van Buren, etc.
This is a map located in Battery Park which shows the original boundaries of New Amsterdam. Pearl Street was the southern boundary and Greenwich Street up to Wall Street made up the rest of the boundaries.
The following three murals are located in the NYS Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street on the 4th floor Jury Room by Robert K. Ryland during the WPA. This mural represents the pre-European view of the island.
This mural represents the "City Hall" of New Amsterdam.
This is another representation of the same building. You will be able to see the dimensions of the footprint of this building at the Goldman Sachs plaza near Stone Street.
This mural represents a map of the early New Amsterdam colony street patterns.
When the Goldman Sachs Building was excavated they discovered the foundations and cisterns from the early era of New York City. But Lovelace Tavern was built in 1670, which would be after New Amsterdam, but was there during the Dutch period of New Orange.
Anything that looks Dutch is not from New Amsterdam, but constructed years or centuries later to be reminiscent of the Dutch presence. Peter Minuit never took the subway.
This nearly ten-foot-tall granite stele at the northwest corner of Battery Park by the Castle Clinton National Monument was designed by noted architect Henry Bacon. The monument and its gilded inscription commemorates the Walloon Settlers, a group of 32 Belgian Huguenot families who joined the Dutch in 1624 on the ship Nieu Nederland ("New Netherland") to colonize New Amsterdam. Bacon also designed Washington's Lincoln Memorial and Williamsburg's Metropolitan Pool.
The Walloons were natives of the County of Hainaut in Belgium who had fled to nearby Holland to escape religious persecution. Made to feel unwelcome in Holland, the Walloons, led by Jesse de Forest, first appealed to the British in 1621 for permission to settle in Virginia. When was denied, they petitioned the Dutch West India Company to allow them to settle in the Dutch-controlled colony of New Amsterdam. Their application was granted and the Walloons left Holland in March 1624, landing in New York on May 20, 1624. One should also know that other groups fled to Holland before coming to the New World, such as the Pilgrims.
We will discuss the Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews that came to New Amsterdam in the summer 1654 and how differently they were treated. While Peter Stuyvesant would not grant the Jews the right to build a synagogue, they met in a building on Mill Street (South William Street) until the first synagogue was built under the English rule in 1730 in the location of this present day garage. 
When elevators and steel allowed 120 Broadway to rise so tall that it blocked the sunlight on the sidewalks of the narrow streets in Lower Manhattan, NYC created Zoning Laws (set backs, sky exposure plane, etc.) in 1916 which then spread across the country. 
ABOUT THE TOUR GUIDE
One annual highlight of the 2007 and 2008 Dutch Week was
the tour of �New Amsterdam� put together
by Rick Landman, Esq., AICP, a
longtime member of the NY Metro Chapter, which is sponsored by the NY Metro Chapter of the APA.