Tag: Dutch

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Adventures In Old New York New Amsterdam Podcasts

The Bowery Boys Adventures in the Netherlands: All Episodes Now Available

Our epic ‘road trip’ to the Netherlands is at an end and it was mission accomplished! We learned so much about New York’s Dutch roots — from the settlement of New Amsterdam to the European settlers who first populated the island which would become Manhattan.

Along the way we also found interesting connections — and great contrasts — between America and the Netherlands. We’ll certainly never look at a bike lane the same way.

All five episodes of our Adventures in the Netherlands series are now available. Make that six actually — our show The Lenape Nation serves as an excellent prologue and reminder of the people who were already here when the Dutch arrived in 1624.

Here’s the trailer for the whole series:

The shows were designed so they the end of one show rolls into the next one, so the series makes an excellent summer binge listen! Better yet, take them with you on your own adventure someplace.

You can find the shows on most of the major podcast players including Spotify, Apple, Overcast, iHeartRadio, Pocket Casts, Podcast Addict and Amazon Music (ask your Alexa to play our show!)

Start here:

#432 The Lenape Nation: Past, Present and Future

The Lenape were among the first in northeast North America to be displaced by white colonists — the Dutch and the English. By the late 18th century, their way of life had practically vanished upon the island which would be known by some distorted vestige of a name they themselves may have given it – Manahatta, Manahahtáanung or Manhattan.

But the Lenape did not disappear. Through generations of great hardship they have persevered.

Our Introduction and a Special Guest:

#433 New Amsterdam Man: An Interview with Russell Shorto

The Bowery Boys Podcast is headed to Amsterdam and other parts of the Netherlands for a very special mini-series, marking the 400th anniversary of the Dutch first settling in North America in the region that today we call New York City.

But before they go, they’re kicking off their international voyage with a special conversation — with Russell Shorto, author of The Island At The Center of the World, the man who inspired the journey.

Amsterdam/New Amsterdam:

#434 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Empire of the Seas

We begin our journey at Amsterdam’s Centraal Station and spend the day wandering the streets and canals, peeling back the centuries in search of New York’s roots.

Our tour guide for this adventure is Jaap Jacobs, author of The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. 

Jaap takes us around to several spots within the old medieval city — Centrum, including the Red Light District — weaving through the canals and along the harbor, in search of connections to New York’s (and by extension, America’s) past.

A look at the New Amsterdam miniature and a scene of full-size Leiden

#435 Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: The Radical Walloons

Our adventure in the Netherlands continues with a quest to find the Walloons, the French-speaking religious refugees who became the first settlers of New Netherland in 1624. Their descendants would last well beyond the existence of New Amsterdam and were among the first people to call themselves New Yorkers.

But you can’t tell the Walloon story without that other group of American religious settlers — the Pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts four years earlier.

#436: Amsterdam/New Amsterdam: Finding Peter Stuyvesant

In our last days in Amsterdam (before heading to other parts of the Netherlands), we spend their time getting to know Peter Stuyvesant, the last director-general of New Amsterdam.

The name Stuyvesant can be found everywhere in New York City. — in the names of neighborhoods, apartments, parks and high schools. He’s a hero to some, a villain to others — and probably a caricature to all. What do we really know about Peter Stuyvesant?

And outside the mayor’s residence in Amsterdam’s exclusive Gouden Bocht (Golden Bend), we meet up with Jennifer Tosch of Black Heritage Tours  to investigate the story of New Amsterdam and the Dutch slave trade.

And Finally, To Other Parts of the Netherlands:

#437: Haarlem, Breukelen, Utrecht: Exploring New York’s Dutch Roots

Follow along with us in this travelogue episode as we visit several historic cities and towns in the Netherlands — Utrecht, De Bilt, Breukelen and Haarlem— wandering through cafe-filled streets and old cobblestone alleyways, the air ringing with church bells and 

But of course, our mission remains the same as the past three episodes. For there are traces of Dutch culture and history all over New York City — through the names of boroughs, neighborhoods, streets and parks.

Over On Patreon

We released a series of daily shows while on the streets of the Netherlands! These are true behind-the-scenes episodes and we let you in on the unique processes of putting these shows together. You can check out those shows — and the many other benefits of being a Bowery Boys patron — by supporting the show at Patreon.

And on Instagram

We’ve been going wild with the Instagram Reels to show you videos of our adventures. Follow us on Instagram to follow our journey. Here’s just a sampling:

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Bowery Boys New Amsterdam

Adventures in the Netherlands: Finding New York’s Dutch Roots

Announcing an epic new Bowery Boys podcast mini-series — The Bowery Boys Adventures in the Netherlands. Exploring the connections between New York City and that fascinating European country, in honor of the 400th anniversary of the first Dutch settlement in this region.

LISTEN TO A SNEAK PREVIEW HERE:

Simply put, you don’t get New York City as it is today without the Dutch who first settled here 400 years ago. The names of Staten Island, Greenwich Village and the Bronx actually come from the Dutch.

The names of places like Brooklyn and Harlem derive from actual Dutch cities and towns. 

Even our own podcast name — Bowery Boys — comes from the Dutch! (Bowery comes from the Dutch bouwerij for farm. Yes technically that makes us “farm boys.”)

Starting this Friday, and over the course of several weekly shows, we’ll dig deeper into the history of those Dutch settlements in New Amsterdam and New Netherland — from the first Walloon settlers in 1624 to the arrival of Peter Stuyvesant. 

But we’ll be telling that story not from New York, but from the other side of the Atlantic, in the Netherlands.

We’ll be walking the the streets of Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, searching for clues of America’s early history. And along the way we’ll be joined by acclaimed Dutch historians, journalists and tour guides. 

While much of our series was recorded in Amsterdam — tracing the paths of Henry Hudson, Peter Stuyvesant and the beginnings of the Dutch West India Company — we’ll also take the show on the road (or the canal, as it were) to Leiden, Utrecht, Haarlem and more.

That’s the Bowery Boys, Adventures in the Netherlands.

Coming soon. Subscribe to the Bowery Boys podcast so you don’t miss a show.  

And support the Bowery Boys on Patreon to listen to daily dispatches from our journey. And those are available now.

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Bowery Boys Bookshelf

The beauty and artistry of early American maps

1606 Jodocus Hondius/Septentrio America

HOLIDAY HISTORY GIFT GUIDE Each week for the rest of the year, the Bowery Boys will recommend a newly released book that you might like to include on your holiday wish list. For other book suggestions, check out other entries on the Bowery Boys Bookshelf.

Pretend GPS was never invented or that man never sent a satellite into order. Imagine going back to a time when people had no idea what continents looked like.

The glory of the most beautiful early maps is that they’re never 100% precise. Early cartographers carefully pieced together observations to create maps that were close to accurate. And where details were not known, artist inspiration filled in the blanks.

MAPPING AMERICA
The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings That Created the United States
Neal Asbury and Jean-Pierre Isbouts

When the great European colonizers first sent explorations out towards the New World, almost nothing was known of the Americas’ size and shape. With each expedition — from Christopher Columbus to Henry Hudson — a bit more of the puzzle was revealed.

In Mapping America, the colorful new history of map making by rare map collector (and radio host) Neal Asbury and National Geographic historian Jean-Pierre Isbouts, the continents reveal themselves slowly in wild and vividly flamboyant illustrations that resonate like the creation of literary fantasy.

1550 map of the Western Hemisphere by Sebastian Münster.

The maps beautifully presented in Mapping America are essentially souvenirs of colonization, and their ravishing and sometimes quizzical charms can belie the dominance of empire which produced them.

This is especially true of the marvelous Dutch maps of rival cartographers Jodocus Hondius and Willem Blaeu whose depictions of America were deeply detailed — to a point. (“Some of Hondius’s changes,” write the authors, “such as the depiction of the River May [in today’s South Carolina], were erroneous and would confound explorers for the next 150 years.”)

Robert Morden’s 1685 Map of the English Empire in North America

But as collected here, these maps can also feel stunningly revolutionary, watching the shape of the continents change (or rather man’s deduction of the continents’ shape) over time.

Mapping America begins in the 15th century and navigates through the history of map-making until the end of the Revolutionary War when cartographers made their first observations of the North American interior.

The maps range from just slightly inaccurate to completely wrong. The colors and artistry will make Google Maps look dull and depressing.

Willem Blaeu map of Virginia and the Southern east coast, 1649-55
Categories
New Amsterdam Podcasts

Peter Stuyvesant and the Fall of New Amsterdam: Where did the Dutch roots of New York City go?

PODCAST There would be no New York City without Peter Stuyvesant, the stern, authoritarian director-general of New Amsterdam, the Dutch port town that predates the Big Apple. 

The willpower of this complicated leader took an endangered ramshackle settlement and transformed it into a functioning city. But Mr. Stuyvesant was no angel.

In part two in the Bowery Boys’ look into the history of New Amsterdam, we launch into the tale of Stuyvesant from the moment he steps foot (or peg leg, as it were) onto the shores of Manhattan in 1647.

Stuyvesant immediately set to work reforming the government, cleaning up New Amsterdam’s filth and even planning new streets. He authorized the construction of a new market, a commercial canal and a defense wall — on the spot of today’s Wall Street. But Peter would act very un-Dutch-like in his intolerance of varied religious beliefs, and the institution of slavery would flourish in New Amsterdam under his unwavering direction.

And yet the story of New York City’s Dutch roots does not end with the city’s occupation by the English in 1664 — or even in 1673 (when the city was briefly retaken by a Dutch fleet). The Dutch spirit remained alive in the New York countryside, becoming part of regional customs and dialect.

And yet the story of New Amsterdam might otherwise be ignored if not for a determined group of translators who began work on a critical project in the 1970s……

Listen Now: Peter Stuyvesant Podcast

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The Costello Plan, New Amsterdam 1660. Surveyed by Jacque Cortelyou. Full size photograph of manuscript map in the Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana of Florence, Italy. The Castello plan is the earliest known plan of New Amsterdam, and the only one dating from the Dutch period. Wikicommons.

New Amsterdam in miniature at the Museum of the City of New York, photographed in 1932

Museum of the City of New York
Peter Stuyvesant tearing the letter demanding the surrender of New York. Artist Howard Pyle, 1923. New York Public Library

The moment when New Amsterdam became New York, depicted in a 1914 picture book.

The old Stuyvesant mansion, near First Avenue, engraved for the N.Y. Mirror newspaper. Courtesy NYPL

The New Netherland Research Center, located on the seventh floor of the New York State Library.  For more information, visit the New Netherland Institute website.

Greg Young

FURTHER LISTENING

We didn’t go too deeply into it in our latest show, but the Bronx also has a very rich Dutch history. The name even comes from a (unfortunately doomed) Dutch settler.

The early history of Broadway begins in New Amsterdam.

We also spoke about the ‘rattle watch’ in our show on the New York Fire Department.