NYC Decade by Decade--1650-1659...Stuyvesant and the Wall

This was the Decade of Peter Stuyvesant, who came to New Amsterdam in 1647 and remained its director until the English takeover in 1664.  The 1650's was a time of clean up and growth--there would be over 340 rowhouses and 1,500 residents here by the end of the Dutch colony.

This was also the decade that saw the city's first school, post office, hospital, lottery, orphanage, coroner, and police force (the rattle watch who patrolled the town at night), as well as the first organized system of fire fighting (150 leather buckets were filled with water and placed on corners in 1657; ladders and hooks were added in 1658).

Stuyvesant also worked to clarify New Netherland.  In a 1650 treaty with English colonial leaders, he lost much of Long Island but did succeed in getting the English to recognize a Dutch border.  Today's Long Island is roughly divided (give or take ten miles) along the Hartford Treaty Line--Nassau (Dutch) in the west and Suffolk (English) in the east.

Five years later, Stuvesant sailed down to Delaware to eradicate New Sweden, which one of his predecessors (Peter Minuit) founded in 1638.  New Sweden surrendered without a shot fired.

BUT MOST IMPORTANT, this was the decade of the first municipal government in North American history and the creation of the city's first municipal debt.  Five schepens/aldermen met in a tavern in February of 1653 and soon decided to take out a loan for what they felt was a vital construction project.  Forty-three of the wealthiest residents provided the capital (with 10% interest) to build a 2,340-foot wall across the top of the town.  And why was that wall needed?

Hudson Heights, Part Three: The Alamo of the American Revolution

Every other Monday we'll be posting the newest byte in our walk through Hudson Heights, my neighborhood in Upstate Manhattan, the stretch on the western ridge between the GW Bridge and the Cloisters.  This is the third installment, which deals with the neighborhood's role in America's War for Independence.  Enjoy!

This byte was directed by Marc Wolf (who has appeared in several of the Little Byte videos) and featured Dana Hart Lubeck as the tourist-consumerist. 

Dana Hart Lubeck is currently living in Colorado where she is working towards her MFA in acting. She misses Manhattan greatly and wants everyone there to take a little byte out of it in her honor.

Marc Wolf recently performed the world premiere of his new solo-show The Road Home: Re-Membering America at Huntington Theatre and Geva Theatre, directed by David Schweizer.  He received an OBIE and was nominated for the Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for his brilliant Off-Broadway performance of Another American: Asking and Telling at The New Group, directed by Joe Mantello.  www.marcwolf.com

HUDSON HEIGHTS CALENDAR

The Bridge (now playing)

The People (now playing)

The Revolution (now playing)

5/11--The Apartments

5/25--The Barista

6/8--The Saint

6/22--The Soldier

7/6--The Park

7/20--The Cloisters

8/3--The Sculptor

 

Central Park's April Flowers

These pictures were taken this month in Central Park.  I try to pull as many of my groups here as possible (hardly a Herculean task) and we go for nice, long, leisurely strolls on many of the 58 miles of pedestrian path.

Realize then that there are usually at least thirty or forty people just out of frame.  The last couple of pictures gives you an idea of the circumstances surrounding my shoots.

 

 

 

NYC Decade by Decade--1640-1649

The 1640's was a dangerous decade, a time of war when the Dutch colony at the foot of Manhattan could have been snuffed out.  The director, Willem Kieft, who had been trying to tax the local Lenapes (while clearing more land for farming) was outraged by their refusal to pay for their own protection.

In February of 1643, after a series of raids and retaliatory skirmishes, Kieft ordered a Dutch platoon to attack two unsuspecting villages late at night.  They returned with 80 heads of men, women and children.  The Year of Blood followed.  Many small settlements were destroyed including Bloemendael (on the present-day Upper West Side) and one farther north (which would be resettled in 1658 and named Haarlem).

It was during this time that Anne Hutchinson and most of her family (expelled from Massachusetts and living in what is now the Bronx) were massacred.  (According to an article in The New Yorker by Ian Frazier, one of the surviving children is the direct ancestor of three presidents--Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Bushes.  Who knew they were related?) 

When the war ended, hundreds (as many as 1600) of Indians and scores of Dutch were dead.  In 1645, Kieft was recalled to Holland to face an inquiry, but he died when his ship sank off the coast of Wales.  He left behind a colony in shambles and one in serious need of reform.

The Dutch West India Company searched their ranks for a new director.  In 1647, a ship arrived bearing Peter Stuyvesant, who would govern the colony with an iron fist and a wooden leg until the British takeover in the 1660's.  

Seen in the diorama at the American Museum of Natural History (pictured), Stuyvesant quickly made peace with the local tribes (though he did retain the laws forbidding fornication with them) and he set to restoring order.  He banned drinking on Sundays and imposed fines for missing church and for speeding along De Heere Straet (Broadway).  He also waged war against all the household garbage tossed into the street and the roaming swine, cows, goats, and chickens which dined off it.  In 1648, he instituted an animal pound and ordered his soldiers to shoot any pig rooting near the foundation of the fort.

But that was just the beginning.  Stuyvesant would transform the town in the next decade after announcing to the population that he would govern them "as a father his children."

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1641:  To win support for his war on the local Indians, Kieft establishes a Council of Twelve to be elected by the people.  This is the first popularly chosen body in the future state of New York.  In 1642, Kieft strips this body of all authority when not only does it refuse to recommend the war but it starts advising him on other topics.

1643:  Anabaptists (forerunners of Quakers), expelled from Massachusetts, settle Gravesend, Brooklyn, just north of Coney Island.  They are chased off, perhaps by the same raiders who massacred Hutchinson's family, but return to Gravesend in 1645 once peace is restored.  (English settlers also establish Hempstead and Flushing during this period.)

1648:  The first pier is built on the East River at Schreyer's Hook.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky.

The Rockefeller Center Ice Skating Rink Closes for the Summer

It's official:  it's mid-April.  On Monday morning, I watched a crew at Rockefeller Center chop and mop all the ice away.  I took these pictures on Tuesday after Monday evening's monsoon washed away any remnant of winter.

The Orchid Show will replace the skaters for a brief period and then the restaurants will transform the area into the Drink Rink, a place where frozen water on the floor doesn't make you fall but frozen margaritas in a pitcher do. 

Tiny Tidbytes...Cayce Recommends:

A lesson learned about books and their covers.
If you haven't seen it yet, you may shed a tear.
Not sophisticated, but moving.

Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent

Demi Moore said on Twitter.com that it reduced her to tears as well.

Nora Roberts and Lifetime Television...They Make the Best Ads!

With only five channels on my television, I didn't get a chance to catch Lifetime Presents the 2009 Nora Roberts Collection, the adaptations that ran on FOUR consecutive Saturday nights from March 21st until April 11th.  But I absolutely loved the ad campaign that greeted me at my nearest subway station every morning for the last month.

 

I would wager at least one agent received an angry phone call. 

 

But which of these eight actors would have been most embarrassed?  Maybe none...what do I know?

 

The more important question, however, which I asked myself every day as I stood in front of these posters and seriously contemplated each one of them (the stars, the poses, the chemistry, the pictures that hinted at the story):

 

If I could only see one of these movies, which would I pick?

After a month, I'm going to go with the green one.

I don't know why.

NYC Decade by Decade--1630-1639

New Amsterdam grew in the next decade, but not nearly as fast as its younger neighbor Boston which in its first ten years grew to 1000 residents.  In its first fourteen years (1624-1638) New Amsterdam had only 400 inhabitants, although, as is often noted, there were already eighteen different languages spoken here. 

There were eighty to ninety structures, most on Pearl Street, the pre-landfill shoreline.  There were five shops and dozens of private homes.  One out of every four structures, by the way, existed either to make or sell alcohol.

When Willem Kieft, yet another director of New Netherland arrived in 1638, much was already in disrepair and a large percentage of the populace was comprised of pirates, smugglers and prostitutes.  Kieft's biggest concern seemed to be the natives.  He tried to enforce a ban on sexual relations between the Dutch and the Indians and in 1639 went so far as to demand "contributions" of wampum, maize and pelts from the Lenapes.  Why?  Because the Dutch West India Company was protecting them from their neighbors.  This is probably the city's earliest known example of "protection" extortion.

At the end of the 1630's Kieft did an admirable job of stirring up hostility with the local tribes and setting up the bloody confrontations of the 1640's.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1633:  The first church building is built at 39 Pearl Street.

1633:  The first regular troops (one hundred of them) arrive in the colony.

1638:  Recalled director, Peter Minuit, returns to the New World and helps establish a Swedish colony on the Delaware River (in what is now Wilmington).  This colony is soon absorbed into New Netherland.  Another director during this decade tries to enforce a Dutch border at the Connecticut River, but the English colonists ignore it and the Dutch abandon jurisidiction there.

1638:  The first regular ferry service is established between present-day Fulton in Brooklyn to present-day Dover Street in Manhattan.

Finally, during this decade, the earliest Manhattan land grant goes to Andries Hudd for land now in present-day Harlem and there are three major "purchases" of land in parts of the current borough of Brooklyn.  The village of Breuckelen is named after a town in Holland.  In 1639, Danish Sea Captain, Jonas Bronck, settles on a plantation north of Manhattan, later referred to as "the Broncks" and "the Bronx."  And, as early as this decade, a hog and cattle market opens in Lower Manhattan and is known as Markveldt, later Marketfield, and finally Bowling Green.

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky.

NYC Myths and Misnomers: the $24 Purchase of Manhattan

Let's start this series of myths and misnomers with the very first one.  Our Origin Myth is set in the 1620's (last week's entry in NYC Decade by Decade) when Peter Minuit purchased the entire island of Manhattan from those silly Injuns for a bunch of beads and trinkets worth only twenty-four dollars.

It makes a nice legend--that New York came into existence with not only a real estate deal but a first-class swindle.  Factually speaking, however, what we know--and all we know--is that in November, 1626, a Dutch merchant related that he had heard that the director of New Netherland had "bought the island Manhattes from the wildmen for the value of sixty guilders."  The claim can't be verified, because there was no deed or bill of sale, though swapping gifts for land was, of course, not unusual despite the divergent conceptions of land ownership. 

It wasn't until 1846 (over two centuries after the alleged trade) that the historian, Edmund O' Callaghan, translated the guilders into dollars--twenty-four dollars for Manhattan.  By 1846, New York was the richest and most populous city in the United States and this twenty-four dollar notion was told and retold (but never inflated).  Thirty-one years after that, in 1877, someone added the beads and trinkets to the story.

Many reinterpretations of the transaction have since been made--from inflating the purchase price and considering interest rates to pointing out that the Indians who might have made the sale were actually from Brooklyn and had no "rights" over the land they "sold"--but as Burrows and Wallace write in Gotham:

"They twenty-four dollar story is mythically akin to Aztec and Roman fables in bestowing on New York a fundanmental legitimacy.  It proclaims a city whose acquisition was based not on conquest but on contract.  As another historian put it in 1898:  'It was an honest, honorable transaction worthily inaugurating the trade and traffic of America's mercantile and financial capital; satisfying the instincts of justice and equality in the savage breast.'"

Hudson Heights, Part Two: The Colombian Dominican

Every other Monday we'll be posting the newest byte in our walk through Hudson Heights, my neighborhood in Upstate Manhattan, the stretch on the western ridge between the GW Bridge and the Cloisters.  This is the second installment, which deals with the people of Washington Heights.  Enjoy!

This byte was directed by Nona Lloyd and featured Luis Villabon as the capricious translator from Colombia.  Nona directed several of the Little Bytes up Broadway--between Madison Square and Columbus Circle.

Nona Lloyd is now the General Manager of the new hot lounge, WATERMARK, located on the Jersey Shore in Asbury Park.  While it may seem that she's left the theater world, she's still using all of her producing and directing skills, every ounce of her creativity, and is sure to jump into "show biz" again.

Luis Villabon is a NYC actor/singer/dancer/director.  He has appeared on Broadway in Cathy Rigby's Peter Pan as well as many Broadway National Tours, including A Chorus Line (Paul).  He is also Robert's Pilates instructor, so if you want that Westfield body, you know who to call!

HUDSON HEIGHTS CALENDAR

The Bridge (now playing)

The People (now playing)

4/27--The Revolution

5/11--The Apartments

5/25--The Barista

6/8--The Saint

6/22--The Soldier

7/6--The Park

7/20--The Cloisters

8/3--The Sculptor

John Lennon and the Dakota...or "Why Do I Bother?"

Last week I took an eighth-grade group from Minnesota for a stroll in Central Park.  In the subway station at 72nd, I used a map to give them an idea of where we were walking and told them that they were about to see the Dakota, one of the first luxury apartment buildings in the city and, yes, the place where John Lennon was shot in 1980.

When we reached the top of the stairs and cameras were raised, I heard a boy behind me tell his friend, "That's where Jay Leno was shot."

NYC Decade by Decade--1620-1629

The 1620's.  The Birth Decade.

Three separate years are often bandied about as the first of New Amsterdam.  Here's what happened during those years--you decide where to put the birthday.

1624:  In early summer, Cornelius May arrived in the harbor with 30 families from Leyden (the same place where the Brownists/Pilgrims found refuge before their journey to Plymouth Rock).  Many of these Walloons (French-speaking Protestants) had been rejected from the English colony of Virginia and headed to New Netherland with May, the Dutch colony's first director.  18 families were sent 150 miles up the Hudson to present-day Albany, 12 were sent to the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers and 8 people (EIGHT!) settled here--technically, not here, but on the smaller Nooten Eylandt (now Governor's Island), five hundred yards off the shore of Manhattan.

1625:  The next director, Willem Verhulst, brought 100 more colonists and 105 heads of livestock.  Verhulst was unpopular, earning a reputation for bullying, cooking the books and losing trade goods.  (Corruption right from the start.)  The cattle, by the way, were the first European inhabitants of Manhattan.  The early settlers on Governor's Island used Manhattan as pasture for their livestock.  In 1625, Manhattan was seen as perhaps the better place for a settlement.  (The Dutch wanted to be closer to the museums and the nightclubs.)  Plans were made to build Fort Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan to serve as an anchor for all of the Dutch West India Company's North American holdings.

1626:  The year of New York's Origin Myth--the "purchase" of Manhattan for $24 of trinkets and beads.  I'm going to write more about this next Wednesday in a new series I might call Lies, Lies, Stop the Madness.  1626 is significant, though, in that the buyer in the story, Peter Minuit (pronounced min-wee), the third director of New Netherland, oversaw the transition from a small camp to something resembling an actual settlement. 

Because of the Mohawk-Mahican wars, the Dutch abandoned their forts on the Delware and Connecticut rivers and relocated to New Amsterdam.  By 1626, there were between 200 and 270 inhabitants.  (Not including the 200-300 "old Manhatans," a diminishing number owing to a plague that had recently infected the local population.)   By the end of the year, there were 30 wooden houses, 1 stone building and 2 windmills, which were all that was needed for a community that would today only take up the first 7 rows at a matinee of Wicked.

ALSO DURING THIS DECADE:

1626--In June, a ship arrives carrying 11 slaves from Angola.  They are used to build the fort and clear the land.

1628--The first church--Dutch Reformed--is established with the arrival of a minister.  (The first church building is constructed in the next decade.)

Sources:  Gotham by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace; Manhattan in Maps by Robert T. Augustyn and Paul E. Cohen; The Historical Atlas of New York City by Eric Homberger; New York:  An Illustrated History by Ric Burns and James Sanders, with Lisa Ades; The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto; and The Big Oyster by Mark Kurlansky.

A Few Days Off

I was finally able to carve out enough time to finish the first draft of the next novel and am taking a few days off to celebrate.

The next blog will be Thursday's entry--the continuation of NYC--Decade by Decade (1620-1629). 

The newest video will be posted next Monday.

An Interim Video

Our newest video will be up next Monday. Please enjoy this earnest substitute in the meantime:

"Swing Low": Harriet Tubman Memorial in Harlem

I love this new public sculpture by Alison Saar. 

 

New York City Decade by Decade--1610-1619...Beaver Testicles

In the decade after Henry Hudson's voyage, there were 15,000 inhabitants in what is now known as New York City (and 30-50,000 in the surrounding areas).  The region, known as Lenapehoking ("where the Lenape dwell"), was comprised of 80 habitation sites, 24 fields and a vast network of connecting trails. 

It was by all accounts a biologically rich and diverse ecosystem.  From The Big Oyster:  "The harbor was crowded with bass, cod, weakfish, herring, mackeral, blackfish, as well as frolicking, diving mammals--whales, porpoises, and seals.  Bears, wolves, beavers, foxes, raccoons, otters, elk, deer, and even a few 'lion,' which may have been panthers or mountain lions, lived in the area.  The Catskills, originally called Katzbergs by the Dutch, were named for their abundance of bobcats and lynx."

While the mammals frolicked in our harbor, Europeans across the seas were jockeying for control of the North American continent.  All of Hudson's charts and logbooks were to be delivered to his Dutch employer, but when he stopped in England, he was promptly detained by English authorities.  The ship log was ultimately delivered to Amsterdam but other documents from the voyage went missing.  Spies from Spain were also following Hudson; charts that disappeared during his detention were almost surely used to draft the famous Velasco Map of 1610, which traced North America's east coast.

The Old Times Square--You Can Go Back Again

Here's a walking tour for April 1st from guest writer, Doug Nervik, who appeared in several of my favorite Little Bytes--as the passerby who knows it all in Hot Dog Real Estate and as Doug McCain who gives four hour tours of one block on 46th in The One Block Specialist. 

Here's Doug:

Invariably when a group of NYC tour guides and city aficionados gather, the talk will turn to the good old days of Times Square--not to the era of Oscar Hammerstein’s vaudeville and rooftop gardens, not to the peak theatrical years of the 1920s, not even to the post WWII years of  Rodgers and that other Hammerstein.

 

No, what they reminisce about is the Seventies and Eighties, just before 42nd Street began its transformation into a theme park, the time before The Lion King and the new New Amsterdam, before Madame Tussaud's and the New Victory, Cold Stone Creamery and the wild colors and shapes of the Westin Hotel.

 

This was the seedy, run-down, decrepit 42nd Street, "the deuce" as the cools guys knew it. It was where the old theaters were grinding out porn and kung fu 24 hours a day, where gangs of young tough kids were heading nowhere and everywhere.  Sure, it was dirty and dangerous, but dammit, it was real and we were there!

 

Remember?  Sort of?

 

Well, not to worry.  On the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and West 40th Street--catercorner from the sleek lines of Renzo Piano's New York Times building--lies a delightfully seedy stretch of shops which will bring you back to the glory days of the strip.  Breathe in the sights, sounds, and odors of times gone by on the gay White Way.