Maps: Layers of Lower Manhattan (text-only)

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1650s: Dutch Fortified Settlement

In 1609, seeking a faster route to the Orient for the spice trade, British explorer Henry Hudson steered his three-masted ship into an enormous, protected harbor. He was perhaps the first to grasp the area's commercial potential.

Fourteen years later, the Dutch government established one of its many foreign trading outposts at that prime location, on the southern tip of Manhattan. The colony, named New Amsterdam, attracted 1,500 residents in just a few decades under the leadership of the one-legged, iron-willed Peter Stuveysant, who arrived in 1647. The young port changed hands in 1664 when the Dutch surrendered it to British forces.

The Dutch left their mark: the strategic battlement on the southern tip; the major thoroughfares defined by Broadway, the Broad Street canal and Wall Street; and the first artificial extension of the shoreline. Dutch-derived names like Harlem, Van Wyck, and the Bowery persist in New York today.

1. Fort Amsterdam
The first Dutch colonists positioned Fort Amsterdam so that any seafarer entering the harbor would quickly see it -- and the flag of the Dutch West India Company. The wooden fort housed the church, the prison and the governor's house. The Dutch refortified it with stone in the 1640s.

2. Het Cingle (North Wall)
In 1653, the Dutch built a long wooden wall across the island and down the western shore to defend their settlement from outsiders with blockhouses on the shore corners and bastions along the wall. The defensive line became a paved lane called Wall Street after the British dismantled the wall in 1699.

3. East Side Shoreline
In the 1650s the Dutch colonial government strengthened the eastern shoreline with a reinforced wall of submerged planks buttressed by trash and dirt. Atop this they built a long, dry walkway along the northern edge of the shore, and a pier on the southern edge. Sailing ships arrived on the east side of the island, the new front door to the city.

4. Stadt Huys (City Hall)
The five-story Stadt Huys was the high-rise of its time. Built as a tavern in 1642, Peter Stuyvesant converted it into a city hall in 1653. High and set back from the eastern shore, the building provided a good view of activities on the pier. Improvements to the Stadt Huys signaled a shift in the colony's focus from defense to commerce.

5. Heere Gracht (Gentlemen's Canal)
The Dutch extended a long ditch north into the heart of the city, with an offshoot to the east. At high tide, merchants used the canal to deliver cargo. The British filled in the canal in 1676, resulting in a street much wider than others and deserving of its name, Broad Street.