The first part on our Amsterdam/New Amsterdam series — called Empire of the Seas — was just awarded the 2025 Webby Award for Best History Podcast (Individual Episode)
A big thank you to our brilliant producer and editor Kieran Gannon, who pulled this together from about a dozen hours of audio footage. And our fabulous guest Jaap Jacobs, who led us around Amsterdam and allowed us to peer back in time to the 17th century.
It’s one of the most foundational questions we could ever ask on this show — how did New York City get its name?
You may know that the English conquered the Dutch settlement of New Netherland (and its port town of New Amsterdam) in 1664, but the details of this history-making day have remained hazy — until now.
Russell Shorto brought the world of New Amsterdam and the early years before New York to life in his classic history The Island At The Center of The World.
His new book Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America functions as a sequel of sorts, revisiting the moment when New Amsterdam ceased to be — and New York was born.
Shorto joins Greg and Tom for a very spirited discussion of international warfare, displaced princes, frantic letter writing and ominous warships in the harbor.
At the end of this story, you will not only know how New York — the city, the state, the whole place, from Buffalo to Long Island — got its name, you will know the exact forgotten historical figure who gave it that name.
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!)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
The epic journey begins! The Bowery Boys Podcast heads to old Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands, to find traces of New Amsterdam, the Dutch settlement which became New York.
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, Honorary Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and the 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.
This year marks the 400th anniversary of Dutch settlement in North America, led by the Dutch West India Company, a trading and exploration arm of the thriving Dutch empire. So our first big questions begin there:
— What was the Dutch Empire in 1624 when New Netherland was first settled? Was the colony a major part of it? Would Dutch people have even understood where New Amsterdam was?
— What’s the difference between the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company?
— To what degree was New Amsterdam truly tolerant in terms of religion? Was it purely driving by profits and trading relationships with the area’s native people like the Lenape?
— The prime export was the pelts of beavers and other North American animals. What happened to these thousands of pelts once they arrived in Amsterdam?
— How central were the Dutch to the emerging Atlantic slave trade? When did the first enslaved men and women arrive in New Amsterdam?
— And how are the Pilgrims tied in to all of this? Had they always been destined for the area of today’s Massachusetts?
Among the places we visit this episode — the Maritime Museum, the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam’s oldest building Oude Kirk, the Schreierstoren (the Weeping Tower) and many more
PLUS: We get kicked out of a convent! And we try raw herring sandwiches
Over on Patreon, we released a series of daily shows while on the streets of the Netherlands. You can check out those shows — and the many other benefits of being a Bowery Boys patron — by supporting the show at Patreon.
Interview with Russell Shorto, author of The Island At The Center of the World
The Lenape and other native peoples of the New York/Hudson Valley region would be both trading partners and adversaries of the Dutch, who claimed to have ‘discovered’ the land those people already lived upon.
The story of religious freedom during the New Amsterdam/Peter Stuyvesant plays a major role in this episode which features a visit to the John Bowne House:
Our original two-part series on New Amsterdam:
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.
Wall Street, today a canyon of tall buildings in New York’s historic Financial District, is not only one of the most famous streets in the United States, it’s also a stand-in for the entire American financial system.
One of the first facts you learn as a student of New York City history is that Wall Street is named for an actual wall that once stretched along this very spot during the days of the Dutch when New York was known as New Amsterdam.
The particulars of the story, however, are far more intriguing. Because the Dutch called the street alongside the wall something very different.
During the colonial era, the wall was torn down and turned into the center of New York life, complete with Trinity Church, City Hall and a shoreline market with a disturbing connection to one New York’s financial livelihoods — slavery.
So how did this street become so associated with American finance? The story involves Alexander Hamilton, a busy coffee house and a very important tree.
After listening to the show about Wall Street, check back into these prior episodes for further adventures relating to this story.
Other great things to read: Start with this excellent five-part deep dive by Michael Lorenzini from the NYC Department of Records & Information Services about New Amsterdam streets and the origin of the name. The brilliant James Nevius wrote about the history of Wall Street for Curbed. Mapping the African American Past holds excellent resources about the 1711 slave market. And a visit to the New Netherland Institute is always a worthy use of your time.
On this website you can read articles about Federal Hall, Charlie Chaplin on Wall Street, the Wall Street bombing of 1920 and this rather interesting article about Peter Stuyvesant and drinking alcohol.
This podcast is inspired by the article below, which ran in 2017 (and was itself based on an earlier article on this website).
A simplistic but colorful view of “Man Mados” or “New Amsterdam” in 1664 (click in to inspect the detail)
There was most definitely a walled fortification nearby on New Amsterdam’s northern boundary, and it certainly did stretch along about the same area as Wall Street does today.
But the present name seems to be a formation of mixed meanings that only a tangle of languages and hundreds of years of history can create. The Dutch themselves referred to an actual street alongside the waterfront that ran up to and alongside the wall as the ‘Cingel’ — according to old history, meaning “exterior, or encircling, street.”
But ‘De Waal Straat’, as it was also known, was also the center of a small Walloon community in New Amsterdam, and some believe the name comes from them. The Walloons were French-speaking Belgians who were among the first European settlers, arriving in the New World as part of a contingent hired by the Dutch West India Company.
A map of New Amsterdam, indicating the layout from about 1644, well before a wall was constructed.
The real reasons for New Amsterdam building its famous wall are also up for grabs. It’s commonly held that an original wooden palisade was erected in 1644 in defense of Indian attacks, and certainly, the residents of New Amsterdam did their part to rile the anger of the native landowners.
Below: A fanciful illustration from Harper’s Magazine, 1908, imagining New Amsterdam and the construction of the original ‘wall’.
But the Dutch had been living at the tip of Manhattan for over 25 years by the time the sturdier wall was built in 1653. In truth, it was commissioned to keep out a different sort of enemy.
You’ll be pleased to know that director-general Peter Stuyvesant was the man who ordered the construction of the wall — in his words, “to surround the greater part of the city with a high stockade and small breastwork” — to replace the inadequate wooden barrier that had previously marked the city’s northern border.
A model of New Amsterdam made in 1933, clearly showing how sudden the city borders stopped thanks to the wall.
This was an incredibly important year for New Amsterdam in two respects. In February 1653, New Amsterdam was chartered as an official Dutch city.
Although Stuyvesant was quite against the outpost receiving such official recognition, he eventually took advantage of it, appointing the first town council himself rather than putting it up to such trivial inconveniences as elections.
But in 1653, the tides of the motherland spilled onto their shores as the war between England and the Netherlands threatened the remote and undefended new city.
The Dutch intended to launch ships from New Amsterdam harbor in a battle against the English.
As a result, the English colonies up north were sure to retaliate, either by sea or, feared Stuyvesant, over land, possibly teaming with hostile Indian forces, down through undefended Manhattan island.
Essentially, the wall that helped give us Wall Street was built because Stuyvesant feared attacks not just from Indian tribes, but from the European colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Haven!
Looking at this more well-known map of New Amsterdam – the Costello Plan of 1660 — one can see the two gates very clearly.
Stuyvesant called upon the 43 richest residents of New Amsterdam to provide funding to fix up the ailing Fort Amsterdam and to construct a stockade across the island to prevent attacks from the north, while it took New Amsterdam’s most oppressed inhabitants — slave labor from the Dutch West India Company — to actually build the wall.
The barrier was constructed out of earth, rock, and 15 feet timber planks sold to the Dutch, ironically enough, by the “notorious“ Englishman Thomas Baxter. In a turnabout that one would expect from hiring your enemy, Baxter later led a group of “Rhode Island marauders“ and pirated Dutch fishing ships.
Early in the 1660s, the Dutch upgraded its wall to include brass cannons and two sturdy gates — one at today’s intersection of Wall and Broadway (for land), the other at Wall and Pearl Street (according to an early account, a water gate and access to a ‘river road’).
Below: A detail from a map of New Amsterdam’s eastern side, clearly showing the water gate, and an illustration from 1908 of that eastern gate:
The British took over New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York, but the wall still remained, becoming more a relic than a serious defense.
By the turn of the century, the fear of land attacks had almost completely subsided and the city was beginning to feel crowded. So in 1699, the wall was torn down with some of the material salvaged to help construct a new City Hall at the corner of Nassau Street and the newly christened Wall Street.
In 1711 a slave market was built on Wall Street along the eastern shore, remaining there until 1762.
When the British were forced out in 1783 by the Americans, the City Hall building was finally renamed Federal Hall — the first official center of American government.
A plaque honoring the old wall sits today at the corner of Wall and Broadway, where the gate to the city once opened:
After reading this article on the origins of Christmas in America, find some information about a virtual Christmas in Old New York tour from Bowery Boys Walks.
There are many different ways to celebrate Christmas, a national holiday derived from the union of Christianity and capitalism. How one chooses to mark the occasion is a reflection of one’s own traditions and faith (or lack thereof).
Christmas can be intensely religious for some, not at all for others. It is ever evolving to fit the population’s needs.
However, if none of the present ideas work, then there is the Puritan way: don’t celebrate it at all.
Below: A 1659 notice forbidding the celebration of Christmas in the Puritan-led colonies
There was such opposition to the holiday within the first communities of the New World that it was outright banned among the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Puritan leaders, ironically enough, took this abolition directly from the Bible; there was no celebration authorized in the book, and since it was doubtful Jesus was actually born on December 25, they considered the day a sinner’s excuse for debauchery.
As Puritans were by nature a homogeneous community, differing traditions were frowned upon, although modest observance of Christ’s birth was occasionally allowed. Generally speaking, December blew through the early English colonies with nary a festivity.
So where did the ingredients of modern Christmas first wash up onto the shores of North America? All signs point to New Amsterdam.
The New Netherland colony of the 17th century was not ruled by such strict restriction of belief.
New Amsterdam, New York’s precursor, was a company town. While laws suppressing the celebration of Christmas were on the books until 1681 up in Massachusetts and other places, down in New Amsterdam, rudimentary holiday traditions were openly, even casually, celebrated.
The settlers of Dutch New Netherland could theoretically celebrate how they wished.
There were certainly observations of Christ’s birth — called Kerstydt — but, it was often overshadowed by a more popular December holiday: Sinterklaas, a Dutch gift-giving tradition where children sat their shoes outside their homes to be filled by a visiting St. Nicolas on December 6th.
(Often, perhaps due to inclement weather, it made sense to have the shoes remain inside, and perhaps better still, to hang stockings near the fireplace.)
New Netherland’s population in 1624 was only 270 people, with few if any children. Over the next 40 years, however, dozens of families populated the outpost, passing down family customs and linking their distant home with the mainland.
With Dutch residents eventually outnumbering the others, their traditions became the most prevalent.
Combine that prevalence (with its extra-exciting gift-getting component) with the envy of the other non-Dutch children, and suddenly Sinterklaas becomes a highly anticipated holiday among the entire population of New Amsterdam.
This, despite Peter Stuyvesant‘s disgust at any holiday which promoted moral laxity (also known in some circles as fun).
Or as author Russell Shorto describes it: “[A]mong the English, the French, the German, the Swedish families of Manhattan, pressure was brought to bear on parents, and the Dutch tradition was adopted and, later, pushed forward a couple of weeks to align with the more generally observed festival of Christmas.”
And New Amsterdamers didn’t stop at Christmas; the party kept going for weeks afterwards, throwing Manhattan’s very first New Year’s parties.
According to one source, “On Nieuw Jaar (New Year) and Kerstydt (Christmas) the Governor’s house was ablaze with candles and the young men and maidens danced in the ‘entry’.”
Official business was closed for weeks after, and “the burghers and their families spent much of their time in firing guns, beating drums, dancing, card-playing, playing at bowls or nine-pins and in drinking beer.”
No wonder Peter Stuyvesant hated holidays!
Over time, Christmas and Sinterklaas — one an observance of Jesus’ birth, the other honoring one of his most popular saints — would melt into each other. Even when the Dutch were kicked out of Manhattan in 1664, Sinterklaas was still celebrated in the region, further infused with English Christmas customs.
However, even as the British were expelled from Manhattan, American holiday traditions were still localized, often tied to one’s specific ethnicity and hardly unified.
It would take New York city leaders in the 19th century and the work of New York’s greatest writers to define new holiday symbols for a national audience.
In some Dutch pockets of upstate New York, the tradition of Sinterklaas is still celebrated today.
Want to hear more about the history of Christmas in New York? Take a Bowery Boys Walking Tour and get into the holiday spirit with a merry virtual stroll through The Big Apple!
On the Christmas In Old New York tour, guide Jeff Dobbins unveils the history of how the Big Apple became the center of all things Christmas from Macy’s to Rockefeller Center.
Book your tickets today! There are several dates available in the month of December. Get your tickets here.
Before New York, before New Amsterdam — there was Lenapehoking, the land of the Lenape, the original inhabitants of the places we call Manhattan, Westchester, northern New Jersey and western Long Island.
This is the story of their first contact with European explorers and settlers and their gradual banishment from their ancestral land.
Fur trading changed the lifestyles of the Lenape well before any permanent European settlers stepped foot in this region. Early explorers had a series of mostly positive experiences with early native people.
With the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam, the Lenape entered into various land deals, “selling: the land of Manhattan at a location in the area of today’s Inwood Hill Park.
But relations between New Amsterdam and the surrounding native population worsened with the arrival of Director-General William Kieft, leading to bloody attacks and vicious reprisals, killing hundreds of Lenape and colonists alike.
Peter Stuyvesant arrives to salvage the situation, but further attacks threatened any treaties of peace. But the time of English occupation, the Lenape were decimated and without their land.
And yet, descendants of the Lenape live on today in various parts of the United States and Canada. All that and more in this tragic but important tale of New York City history.
To get this week’s episode, simply download it for FREE from iTunes or other podcasting services or get it straight from our satellite site.
Or listen to it straight from here:
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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.
If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!
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The long road of the Lenape. This 1978 map shows the path of their various relocations across the country in comparison with the relocation path of the Cherokee.
Henry Hudson’s interaction with the native people of the area would much later inspire a host of fanciful depictions.
From a 1909 postcard for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration
From an old textbook:
“‘Designed and etched for Bancroft’s History of the United States’ Written on image: ‘Sept. 7 1609’
From a 1915 textbook ‘A First Book In American History’ — “Hudson’s ship anchored again opposite the Catskill Mountains, and here he found some very friendly Indians, who brought corn, pumpkins, and to-bacco to sell to the crew. Still farther up the river Hudson visited a tribe onshore, and wondered at their great heaps of corn and beans. The chief lived in around bark house. Captain Hudson wasmade to sit on a mat and eat from a red wooden bowl. The Indians wished him to stay all night; they broke their arrows and threw them into the fire, to show their friendliness.
Behold New Amsterdam!
From another text book, this one from 1881:
From an 1876 print: ‘Treaty with the Indians at Fort Amsterdam.” Not sure what year this picture depicts but everybody has two legs, so no Peter Stuyvesant!
A well-known engraving by Aldert Meijer depicts New Amsterdam as being touched by the hand of providence.
A drawing of the 1926 purchase of Manhattan between the native population and Peter Minuit. Image is from Popular Science Magazine, 1909.
…clearly derived from
“Peter Minuit and the Swedes purchasing lands of the Indians.” Illustration dated 1890
William Kieft’s reputation as a vicious tyrant is made apparent here in this 1897 illustration captioned ‘Kieft’s Mode of Punishment.’
From the Delaware Indians website: “A painting by Lenape artist Jacob Parks (1890-1949), which depicts a Lenape family leaving their home on their reservation in Kansas in 1867. This area had been their home for over thirty-five years, and now the government told them they had to move to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).”
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian is currently living in the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. It’s a FREE museum so you should stop in anytime you’re in the Battery Park area.
FURTHER READING
The First Manhattans: A History of the Indians of Greater New York by Robert S. Grumet
The Island At The Center Of The World by Russell Shorto
The Delaware Indians: A History by  C.A. Westanger
Native New Yorkers: The Legacy of the Algonquin People of New York by Evan T. Pritchard
The Official Site of the Delaware Tribe of Indians
Lenape Lifeways: An overview of Lenape life and customs
Removal History of the Delaware Tribe
FURTHER LISTENING
After you’ve listened to this show on the history of the Lenape, check out other shows related to this episode:
Today we sometimes define New York City’s African-American identity by the places where thriving black culture developed – Harlem, of course, and also Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant, neighborhoods that developed for groups of black residents in the 20th century.
But by no means were these the first in New York City. Other centers of black and African-American life existed long before then. In many cases, they were obliterated by the growth of the city, sometimes built over without a single marker, without recognition.
This is the story of a few of those places. From the ‘land of the blacks‘ — the home to New Amsterdam and British New York’s early black population — to Seneca Village, a haven for black lives that was wiped away by a park.
From Little Africa — the Greenwich Village sector for the black working class in the late 19th century — to Sandy Ground, a rural escape in Staten Island with deep roots in the neighborhood today.
And then there’s Weeksville, Brooklyn, the visionary village built to bond a community and to develop a political foothold.
In this collection of short historical stories, Greg welcomes Kamau Ware (of the Black Gotham Experience) and Tia Powell Harris of the Weeksville Heritage Center to the show.
The episode is a rebroadcast of a show which first aired on June 9, 2017. Stay tuned to the end of this show for some newly written material and an update on the Black Gotham Experience and the Weeksville Heritage Center.
To get this week’s episode, just find our show on Stitcher or your favorite podcast streaming service. Or listen to it here:
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We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every week. We’re also looking to improve and expand the show in other ways — publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a creator on Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators.
Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans.
If you’d like to help out, there are six different pledge levels. Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
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Our thanks to Weeksville Heritage Center and Black Gotham Experience. Visit their websites for further information about upcoming events and programs. In addition please check out the Sandy Ground Historical Society for information about this important site in Staten Island.
Weeksville is hosting a weekend of Juneteenth events. Please visit their website for further information:
Check out the Black Gotham Experience website for information on online courses starting in July. And become a member to join in their work as BGX heads towards its 10th anniversary.
Three boys from Sandy Ground, Staten Island, circa 1912.
More information about the Black Gotham Experience here, including a list of walking tours. Check out the websites for Weeksville Heritage Center and the Sandy Ground Historical Society for more information about visiting hours and tours.
This map of Seneca Village was made by Andy Proehl illustrating what the settlement looked like in the years before its destruction.
The approximate area via Google Maps. The Great Lawn now sits on the spot where the reservoir is.
The approximate area of Little Africa. The map is from 1889.
Richard Hoe Lawrence and Jacob Riis’s images of a “Black and Tan” dive bar on Broome Street near Wooster Street, 1890.
Minetta Lane, circa 1900.
The approximate location of Weeksville, Brooklyn
The three surviving houses today
The picture at top features an African-American family posed in front of the John Brown Homestead in Torrington, Connecticut, circa 1890s-1900. I particularly love this picture because the house is reminiscent of the Weeksville houses and those that were in Sandy Ground.
FURTHER LISTENING
After you’ve listened to this episode on Seneca Village and New York’s forgotten black communities, check out these past Bowery Boys episodes about aspects of New York City history featured on this show:
EPISODE 306 Recorded live at the WNYC Greene Space
In this special episode, the Bowery Boys podcast focuses on the delicious treats that add to the New York experience. These aren’t just the famous foods that have been made in New York, but the unique desserts that make the city what it is today.
The origins of some of these treats go way, way back — the Dutch New Amsterdam. Others have become staples of the New York diet thanks to immigrant groups who first developed and perfected them in neighborhoods like the Lower East Side.
So while this show may seem like a trifle, the underlying story celebrates the contributions of local communities in creating timeless food classics, served in historic bake shops, candy stores and cafes.
Cheesecake and cannoli are two of our five historic treats. What are the other three? Tune in and find out! (And definitely save some room after dinner for dessert.)
LISTEN NOW — JUST DESSERTS
THE TAKEOUT — A bonus after-show podcast for those who support us on Patreon. Greg dives into further tales of sweet history. Near the Brooklyn Bridge sits a remnant of an old Revolutionary War sugar house with a disturbing history (and possibly ghosts). The Gilded Age shopping district of Ladies Mile was also the home of a short lived chocolate factory. And the tragic story behind the Tootsie Roll.
PLUS: More on the history of soft drinks. Who was Doctor Pepper?
A big thank you to WNYC and the Greene Space for holding this Bowery Boys live event. You can watch video of our recording session at the Greene Space website.
DESSERT PLACES WE MENTIONED ON THIS WEEK’S SHOW — and a few others that we love. Pay them all a visit!
Donut Pub, Manhattan (Chelsea), 203 W 14th St
Doughnut Plant, various locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn
Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop, Brooklyn (Greenpoint), 727 Manhattan Ave
Economy Candy, Manhattan (Lower East Side), 108 Rivington St
Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, Brooklyn (Carroll Gardens), 513 Henry Street
Gem Spa, Manhattan (East Village), 131 2nd Avenue
Ray’s Candy Store, Manhattan (East Village), 113 Avenue A
Junior’s Cheesecake, various locations in Manhattan and Brooklyn
Eileen’s Special Cheesecake, Manhattan (Nolita) 17 Cleveland Place
Court Pastry Shop, Brooklyn (Carroll Gardens) 298 Court Street
Caputo’s Bake Shop, Brooklyn (Carroll Gardens) 329 Court Street
Cafe Ferrera, Manhattan (Little Italy), 195 Grand Street
Caffe Palermo ‘The Cannoli King’, Manhattan (Little Italy), 148 Mulberry Street
Veniero‘s Pasticceria & Caffé, Manhattan (East Village), 342 E 11th Street
William Greenberg Desserts, Manhattan (various locations)
Hemstrought’s Bakeries, Ithica, New York
FURTHER LISTENING: Check out our other food history episodes!
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……
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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
And join us for the first ever Bowery Boys Movie Club, an exclusive podcast provided to our supporters on Patreon. This month’s selection — Taxi Driver.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
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New Amsterdam in miniature at the Museum of the City of New York, photographed in 1932
The moment when New Amsterdam became New York, depicted in a 1914 picture book.
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.
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.
We are turning back the clock to the very beginning of New York City history with this special two-part episode, looking at the very beginnings of European settlement in the area and the first significant Dutch presence on the island known as Manhattan.
The Dutch were drawn to the New World not because of its beauty, but because of its beavers. Beaver pelts were all the rage in European fashion, and European explorers like Henry Hudson reported back that this unexplored land was filled with the animals and their beautiful coats.
Of course, people were already living here — the tribes of the Lenape — and the first settlers sent by the Dutch — French-speaking Walloons — encountered them in the mid 1620s. But relations were relatively good between the two parties at the beginning. Could the native Munsee-speaking people and the first Dutch settlers get along?
In this episode, we walk you through the first two decades of life in the settlement of New Amsterdam, confined to the southern tip of Manhattan. What was the island like back then? How did people live and work in a region so entirely unknown to its European inhabitants?
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The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every other week. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
And join us for the first ever Bowery Boys Movie Club, an exclusive podcast provided to our supporters on Patreon.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far.
________________________________________________________________________
The official seal of New York City contains many clues to the city’s history. It also features not one, but two, beavers.
The original coat of arms for New Amsterdam and New Netherland.
Henry Hudson on a vintage cigarette card.
A 1614 map drawn by explorer Adriaen Block, labeling the entire place New Nederlandt!
A look at New Amsterdam in it might have looked in 1640. Note the windmill in the background and gallows on Capske Hook!
An illustration from the 1921 book A History of the United States by Henry Eldridge Bourne. A Dutch blacksmith shop and a farm scene, Manhattan Island, where a brookside path with the name of Maiden Lane followed a valley to the East River
From the same book — a look at Fort Amsterdam and Capske Hook.
An illustration of New Amsterdam clearly depicts its placement in the larger scheme of the New Netherland territory (and, as the years went by, its increasing prominence as both a tobacco producer and a component of the Dutch transatlantic slave trade).
A look at New Amsterdam in the year 1642, dominated by the fort to the south and a sheep’s pasture and various farms to the north.
Plan of New Amsterdam About 1644, map dated 1902, compiled from the Dutch and English records by J. H. Innes.
The Pieter Schaghen letter outlining the purchase of the island of Manhattan. This letter is located at the New Netherland Research Center.
FURTHER LISTENING
Looking for the latest episode of our podcasts? Listen now on iTunes to “The Bowery Boys” and “The First”.
Find recent podcast episodes here, and click to read more about listening options here.
Our first-ever Bowery Boys book, “Adventures in Old New York” is now out in bookstores! A time-traveling journey into a past that lives simultaneously besides the modern city.
Are you ready to walk through time? We’re excited to announce Bowery Boys Walks, our new walking tours developed around our podcast. Join us in the streets — beginning in October 2018!
The story of the borough of the Bronx is so large, so spectacular, that we had to spread it out over three separate podcasts!
In Part One — The Bronx Is Born — we look at the land that is today’s borough, back when it was a part of Westchester County, a natural expanse of heights, rivers and forests occasionally interrupted by farm-estates and modest villages. Settlers during the Dutch era faced grave turmoil; those that came afterwards managed to tame the land with varying results. Speculators were everyone; City Island was born from the promise of a relationship with the city down south.
During the Revolutionary War, prominent families were faced with a dire choice — stay with the English or side with George Washington’s Continental Army? One prominent family would help shape the fate of the young nation and leave their name forever attached to one of the Bronx’s oldest neighborhoods. Sadly that family’s legacy is under-appreciated today.
By the 1840s, Westchester County was at last connected to New York via a new railroad line. It was a prosperous decade with the development of the area’s first college, a row of elegant homes and some of its very first ‘depot towns.’ Two decades later, the future borough would even cater to the dead — both the forgotten (at Hart Island) and the wealthy (Woodlawn Cemetery).
The year 1874 would mark a new chapter for a few quiet towns and begin the process of turning this area into the borough known as the Bronx.
FEATURING: Many places in the Bronx that you can visit today and experience this early history up close, including Wave Hill, Pelham Bay Park, Woodlawn Cemetery, City Island and more.
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast is brought to you …. by you!
We are now producing a new Bowery Boys podcast every two weeks. We’re also looking to improve the show in other ways and expand in other ways as well — through publishing, social media, live events and other forms of media. But we can only do this with your help!
We are now a member of Patreon, a patronage platform where you can support your favorite content creators for as little as a $1 a month.
Please visit our page on Patreon and watch a short video of us recording the show and talking about our expansion plans. If you’d like to help out, there are five different pledge levels (and with clever names too — Mannahatta, New Amsterdam, Five Points, Gilded Age, Jazz Age and Empire State). Check them out and consider being a sponsor.
We greatly appreciate our listeners and readers and thank you for joining us on this journey so far. And the best is yet to come!
In this 1896 Robert Bracklow photograph, a solitary woman stands by the Bronx River, looking almost completely unchanged from how it would have looked when Jonas Bronck saw it.
A 1914 illustration recounting the tale of Jonas Bronck:
Another book illustration, this one of the massacre of Anne Hutchinson and her family.
The Split Rock as it appeared in 1910, with a memorial plaque to Anne and her family and no highways anywhere around it. The rock today has no plaque but the impression of one can still be seen.
An auction map of the Bronx from 1910, highlighting the area of Throg’s Neck which gets its name from Throckmorton or Throgmorton.
The King’s Bridge from an 1856 illustration.
The town of Westchester in the East Bronx, pictured here in 1872. Throg’s Neck is in the lower portion of the map. Today’s neighborhood of Soundview comprises the green portion.
The village of Morrisania, pictured here in 1860, which arose from land owned by the Morrises after the railroad encouraged a row of ‘depot towns.’
St Ann’s Episcopal Church in Morrisania, where both Lewis and Gouverneur Morris (and Gouverneur’s wife Ann) are buried.
A view of St. Ann’s today:
The Van Cortlandt Mansion then (in 1906)…
And today (featuring George Washington’s room):
The old City Island monorail from 1910
The old City Island Bridge, the only way on or off the island that’s not a boat. That remains true to this day, although the bridge is much sturdier-looking today!
The old City Island Cemetery with Hart Island in the distance.
Breathtaking Wave Hill and the grounds which provide an unbelievable view of the Hudson River and the Palisades.
Here’s Tom, getting a peek inside George M Cohan’s mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery:
Jerome Park Racetrack where the Belmont Stakes were first run in 1867.
From Harpers Weekly, 1886:
The former (awkward) location of Edgar Allan Poe’s cottage. It has since been moved to the Grand Concourse.
And finally — Gouverneur Morris’ mansion which — believe it or not — stood at the foot of St. Ann’s Avenue until the 20th century.
We want to give a big thanks to the Bronx Historical Society, Wave Hill, Woodlawn Cemetery and St. Ann’s Episcopal Church for helping us with our research. Keep coming back to the blog throughout the month of September as we’ll have additional stories about these places and others.
New Amsterdam, the home of Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt (by Thomas Addis Emmet, courtesy NYPL)
The new Ken Burns seven-part documentary The Roosevelts: An Intimate History is underway on PBS, a sprawling look at one of New York’s most prominent families. It began last night with the introduction of young Theodore Roosevelt, the sickly boy turned New York police commissioner. Tonight, in part two, he becomes the President of the United States.
With so many Roosevelts to speak about — and two clans of Roosevelts, named for their summer haunts Hyde Park and Oyster Bay — there wasn’t much time to mention the very first Roosevelt. That is, the first ancestor to arrive in future North America — Claes Maartenszen van Rosenvelt.
Claes arrived to New Amsterdam sometime around 1649 or 1650, although possibly much earlier (some records say 1638), one of a number of Dutch settlers arriving at this outpost of the Dutch West India Company. If the earlier dates are true, this puts Rosenvelt in the outpost during the years of William Keift, when New Amsterdam was a ragged company town, with a rudimentary civic structure and in constant fear of attack by the Lenape.
His wife is referred to in records as both Jannetje Samuels and Jannetie Thomas. Keep in mind that with the paucity of extant records, a company-town’s inefficiencies, basic human error and the “peculiar method of naming people during Dutch times,” it’s incredible that we even have these names at all!
Many histories make note of Claes unusual nickname — Klein Klassje or Cleyn Claesjen (“Little Claes”) — perhaps meaning he was a short man or that there was a much larger Claes in town. It’s not inconceivable to think he was also “short” in social stature, not physical.
The colony was whipped into a relatively more livable condition with the arrival of Peter Stuyvesant in 1647, and records list Claes as having a farm “situated back of Stuyvesant’s Bouwery, at present somewhere between Broadway and the East River, in the neighborhood of Tenth Street.” [source]
The couple had four children of which only one (Nicolas) took and kept the name Rosenvelt, which of course was modified over time into Roosevelt.
For decades, Manhattan once had a Roosevelt Street, named not for any of the later great leaders who would make the family famous, but (it’s believed) for either Nicolas or his son Jacobus. The family owned a profitable mill on a small stream which ran between the East River and the banks of Collect Pond. [source]
At right: the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge as seen from Roosevelt Street, 1876 (courtesy MCNY)
In the 19th century, Roosevelt Street was a dour place, rife with poverty and the downtrodden culture of South Street piers. It was entirely erased in the 1950s with the creation of the Alfred E. Smith Houses.
In old New York, there was a curious Valentine’s Day custom involving young women running around town whipping men with rope.
Yes, you read that correctly. This form of socially acceptable violence was popular in the colonial era and extended well into the early 1800s. It derives from a tradition practiced as part of an early Dutch holiday known as Vrowen Dagh* (or Woman’s Day) and was likely popular among the young ladies of New Amsterdam, New York’s precursor.
According to the 1850 history ‘Rural Hours’ written by Susan Fenimore Cooper (daughter of James), “[e]very mother’s daughter … was furnished with a piece of cord, the size neither too large or too small” and fitted with a “due length left to serve as a lash.” Cooper elaborates on this playfully violent custom:
“On the morning’s of this Vrowen Dagh, the little girls — and some large ones, too, probably for the fun of the thing — sallied out, armed with such a cord, and every luckless wight of a lad that was met received three or four strokes from this feminine lash.”
Young men of marrying age dashed from place to place, fearful of being flirtatiously struck in this whirlwind of flying rope.
At left: Woman with a whip, 1780
“Every lad whom they met was sure to have three or four smart strokes from the cord bestowed on his shoulders,” writer Gabriel Furman recalled in 1875. “These, we presume, were in those days considered as ‘love-taps’, and in that light answered all the purposes of the ‘valentine’ of more modern times, as the lasses were not very likely to favor those with their lashes whom they did not otherwise prefer.”
There obviously seems to be some statement about domestic violence in this practice. At one point, injured males suggested the following day be a “Men’s Day,” allowing men to chase women around with these braided whips. But they were told “the law would thereby defeat its very own purpose, which was, that they should, at an age and in a way most likely never to forget it, receive the lesson of manliness — he is never to strike.” [source]
At some point in New York, this custom actually did blend with the English custom of Valentine’s Day, and young women of the colonial era continued enjoying this frivolous custom — in fact, well into the early 1800s. It blessedly vanished by the mid-19th century, replaced with the more recognizable gesture of sending valentines through the mail.
“We heard that 20,000 [valentines] passed through the New York office last year,” Cooper writes in 1850. But it seems the writer had grown tired of even this custom. “They are going out of favor now, however, having been much abused of late years.”
*I think the actual Dutch word would be Vrouwendag but I’m preserving the original spelling from Fenmore and Furman’s text. An 1832 Dutch dictionary says Vrouwendag means ‘Lady Day’!
Vintage valentine and whip lady courtesy New York Public Library