{"id":203754,"date":"2026-04-20T20:14:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203754\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T20:14:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T20:14:01","slug":"recalling-when-lower-manhattan-was-new-amsterdam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203754\/","title":{"rendered":"Recalling When Lower Manhattan Was New Amsterdam"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of our Museums special section<\/a> about how institutions are commemorating the past as they move into the future.<\/p>\n

To the untrained eye, the gleaming black skyscraper at the corner of Whitehall and Pearl Street is unremarkable.<\/p>\n

To Russell Shorto, a historian who has written two books on Manhattan\u2019s Dutch roots, it\u2019s a landmark.<\/p>\n

Peter Stuyvesant \u201cbuilt his house on this corner,\u201d Shorto said on a recent walk through Lower Manhattan. He noted that, given the location, Stuyvesant \u2014 the peg-legged leader of New Netherland, the Dutch colony centered on New Amsterdam \u2014 could monitor ships coming and going, \u201cso he had an idea of what was going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

And a lot was going on.<\/p>\n

Continuing down the block, Shorto explained that 400 years ago, the Dutch settlers arriving here built the first houses in the settlement of New Amsterdam along this street, Pearl \u2014 so named because back then, it ran along the water, and oysters could be found offshore.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroad Street, here, this was the canal,\u201d said Shorto, crossing a curved street now lined with a row of Citi Bikes. \u201cThis canal goes right up through the center of New Amsterdam, and we\u2019re at the edge of New Amsterdam looking out on the water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walk with Shorto long enough, and each corner takes its 17th-century form. A gray brick outline on a plaza becomes the City Tavern, where the Dutch colonists gathered to drink and exchange news. A helicopter pad on the East River becomes Coenties Slip, where ships arrived and departed, bearing beaver pelts and tobacco and settlers and enslaved people. Wall Street becomes a long wooden defensive perimeter the Dutch built to keep the English out: the wall that gave the street its name.<\/p>\n

One particularly pivotal spot? Wall and Broad, with the New York Stock Exchange on one corner, Federal Hall on another.<\/p>\n

Gesturing at all of it, Shorto said, \u201cthink about all of these things \u2014 what a spark New Amsterdam was and how much flowed from it. The center of American capitalism in the 1600s, which in the 1700s becomes Wall Street. The center of American democracy.\u201d He waved toward Federal Hall<\/a>. \u201cThis was where George Washington was inaugurated.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Museums Special Section<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was the epicenter of all that, and there\u2019s still something of that vibe here, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

In that moment, New Amsterdam feels very real. So real you can picture it, and see the Dutch inheritances in New York \u2014 and America \u2014 of today.<\/p>\n

In May, the New York Historical<\/a> aims to bring that vivid sense of New Amsterdam to life in an exhibition, \u201cOld Masters, New Amsterdam<\/a>\u201d (through Aug. 30). Curated by Shorto, who is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the museum, and Arthur K. Wheelock Jr., a former curator at the National Gallery of Art, the exhibition uses 17th-century Dutch paintings, along with maps and documents, to give a sense of life in New Amsterdam \u2014 and to draw connections between past and present, the Netherlands and America.<\/p>\n

Though none of the old master paintings in the show were made in New Amsterdam, or depict specific locations there, the works are being used to convey what Dutch people at the time valued, and how they behaved.<\/p>\n

In short, Wheelock explained, the idea in displaying these works was to convey what New Amsterdam might have been like in the 17th century, by showing what the people who populated it were like.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t walk the streets with them in the way we\u2019d like to, but we want to feel like we are,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The show was long in the making. For years, Louise Mirrer, president and chief executive of the New York Historical, and her staff had been contemplating ways to mark two big occasions this year: the 400th anniversary of New Amsterdam\u2019s founding and the 250th birthday of the United States.<\/p>\n

She and Shorto knew about the Leiden Collection<\/a>, a trove of Dutch old master paintings and drawings owned by the American billionaire Thomas Kaplan and his wife, Daphne Recanati Kaplan. Mirrer said that, when she and Shorto had an idea for a show highlighting the ties between the Old World and the New, they approached Kaplan to ask whether they could use some paintings from the collection.<\/p>\n

In a video interview, Kaplan recalled the conversation. \u201cWith me, it was, you want to promote history and the 400th anniversary, et cetera et cetera? You had me at hello.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mirrer remembered Kaplan\u2019s enthusiasm. \u201cHe was like, \u2018Russell, here\u2019s the cookie jar. Just put your hand inside, and take whatever you want.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

That cookie jar contained some 220 works by Rembrandt, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou and their contemporaries, all focused on what Wheelock, who serves as senior adviser to the Leiden Collection, calls \u201cthe human element.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kaplan explained that, in collecting, he has taken a keen interest \u201cnot just in high life, but also in regular people doing regular things.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have paintings by Gabriel Metsu of women who had clearly been war widows and men changing diapers, and herring sellers and fishmongers, and just these very, very prosaic scenes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wheelock and Shorto pored over the collection. To find paintings that would evoke New Amsterdam, they looked for pieces featuring all kinds of people \u2014 soldiers, sailors, doctors, traders, the rich and the poor. <\/p>\n

Some pieces they selected were tronies, paintings that depict a person who would not have paid to have their portrait done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a guy that Rembrandt would have seen on the street, for example,\u201d Wheelock said, adding that these tronies \u201care often very roughly painted and expressive, and they give you a feeling of the people \u2014 you can almost hear them talk.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair chose 45 paintings from the Leiden Collection, adding works from various museums, archives and private collections \u2014 as well as items from the New York Historical\u2019s own collection \u2014 to create the universe of the show.<\/p>\n

A big, boisterous scene will welcome museum goers to that universe, in Jan Steen\u2019s \u201cPeasants Merrymaking Outside an Inn<\/a>\u201d (ca. 1676).<\/p>\n

In that scene, \u201cpeople are drinking and playing the fiddle and all these different little vignettes are going on,\u201d Shorto said, adding, it \u201creally kind of gives you this sense of New Amsterdam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before continuing through the art, visitors will encounter objects tied to the real people who lived in New Amsterdam \u2014 documents bearing their handwriting, portraits showing their faces \u2014 in a prologue.<\/p>\n

These will include the proposed coat of arms for New Amsterdam (complete with two large beavers), portraits of Stuyvesant and Cornelius Steenwyck (another prominent city leader) and the Flushing Remonstrance, a document that, the wall text notes, \u201cis considered by many to be the first statement of religious freedom in America.\u201d<\/p>\n

The idea, Shorto explained, is for visitors to \u201cget steeped\u201d in the history, then \u201ccarry that into the main show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The main show will unfold across six sections: \u201cAt Home,\u201d \u201cAt Work,\u201d \u201cAt Play,\u201d \u201cFood and Drink,\u201d \u201cThe Individual Self\u201d and \u201cThe Wider World.\u201d<\/p>\n

In many paintings, the activities look strikingly familiar. In one domestic scene, a young man lights a candle; in another, a woman plays with a dog. In the work section, \u201cA Bookkeeper at His Desk<\/a>\u201d (ca. 1627) \u2014 surrounded by books, a faraway expression on his weary face \u2014 is relatable to any exhausted corporate cubicle dweller. In \u201cAt Play,\u201d merrymakers skate on an expanse of ice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWinter came,\u201d Wheelock said. \u201cWe know that. Snowcrete.\u201d New Amsterdammers 400 years ago: They\u2019re just like us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Wider World\u201d section opens the show\u2019s aperture to consider New Amsterdammers\u2019 connections with the world beyond a handful of streets at the tip of Manhattan \u2014 examining why the colonists left the Netherlands, how they traveled across the ocean and how they were connected to the world at large.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Departure of the Pilgrim Fathers from Delfshaven\u201d (1620) reminds visitors of one primary emigration driver: religious persecution. The Dutch policy of religious tolerance worked in the favor of many who came to New Amsterdam, from French-speaking Protestants to Jews fleeing Dutch Brazil.<\/p>\n

In the paintings here, details speak volumes. A man\u2019s pipe nods to the Virginia tobacco fields; a young woman\u2019s parrot points to trade with the Caribbean. <\/p>\n

That trade was built on one of the darkest aspects of the Dutch colonies: trade in enslaved people. New Amsterdam\u2019s history involved slavery, and the subjugation of Indigenous people, as a contextual section makes clear, by showcasing Wenceslaus Hollar\u2019s etchings of Black people and Native people alongside etchings of white women in furs: the products of that subjugation and exploitation.<\/p>\n

Beneath it all runs a common undercurrent: trade. One sign notes that the paintings themselves could not have been created without it. The pigments used by the Dutch old masters to make their paints included materials from Mexico, Afghanistan and even the ocean. And the canvases, if they were not being painted on, could be made into sails.<\/p>\n

As the years rolled on, people kept sailing across the ocean and, in 1776, the United States declared its independence, starting the Revolutionary War.<\/p>\n

The exhibition\u2019s last section brings the story up to the 250th anniversary. As in the prologue, it grounds visitors in the history, with items showing the handwriting, and faces, of people in the nascent United States. And finally, there is a map of New York in 1776, marked with Dutch place names still with us today: Brooklyne (from the Dutch Breuckelen), Haerlem (once Haarlem) and Staten Island (formerly Staaten Eylandt).<\/p>\n

It is fitting, perhaps, to end with a beginning because, as Mirrer pointed out, \u201cin many ways, this is an origin story.\u201d<\/p>\n

She noted that, to understand who we are as Americans, \u201cwe need to understand that we come from diverse people, and we come from people who set foot in this city, and in this nation, for the first time and found here an opportunity to make something of themselves that they couldn\u2019t succeed in doing in Europe, or they simply wanted a new chance for themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that\u2019s what it means to be an American, really.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is part of our Museums special section about how institutions are commemorating the past as they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":203755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[80607,80608,80609,41269,80610,36023,75,28924,84,83,80612,2576,9,24,56,63,33456,62471,80611,63739],"class_list":{"0":"post-203754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-archives-and-records","9":"tag-collectors-and-collections","10":"tag-colonization","11":"tag-financial-district-manhattan","12":"tag-leiden-collection-llc","13":"tag-louise","14":"tag-manhattan","15":"tag-manhattan-nyc","16":"tag-manhattan-headlines","17":"tag-manhattan-news","18":"tag-mirrer","19":"tag-museums","20":"tag-new-york","21":"tag-new-york-city","22":"tag-ny","23":"tag-nyc","24":"tag-peter","25":"tag-russell","26":"tag-shorto","27":"tag-stuyvesant"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/203755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}