New Amsterdam and Old New York: Remnants of Netherlandic Architecture in Late-17th Century New York City
By Jeroen van den Hurk
On the afternoon of Monday, June 7, 1697, Dr. Benjamin Bullivant set out from Boston on a trip down the East Coast that would take him all the way down to New Castle, Delaware, and back.[1] The exact reason for his travel is unknown, but he carried with him various letters of introduction for dignitaries he would meet along the way. He also kept a travel diary in which he recorded notes on the built environment he saw in New York City, some of which he considered old and some of which he labeled new. Bullivant’s architectural observations are a valuable historical record. When combined with information about the architecture gleaned from surviving colonial Dutch documents, we can gain insight into what the initial settlers of New Netherland had built and how much of their buildings and architectural traditions survived by the time Bullivant visited at the end of the 17th century.
Charles X. Harris, The Surrender of Nieuw Amsterdam in 1664, 1908 (Library of Congress)
New Amsterdam had been founded by the Dutch West India Company in 1624. It became the governmental and commercial hub of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which stretched from present-day Lewes, Delaware in the south, up to Albany, New York, in the north, and east to the Connecticut River. In a long line of conflicts that were going on between the Dutch and the English during the 17th century, the English took control of New Amsterdam, and the colony of New Netherland, on September 8, 1664. [2] The population of the town had at that point grown to approximately 2,500 inhabitants.[3]
What did Bullivant expect to see as he visited the city roughly thirty-three years later? A city filled with Dutch-looking homes and buildings, a city unmistakably English in its architecture, or something in between? Had he been familiar with the concept of acculturation, he could perhaps have expected the third possibility. Acculturation has been defined as the one-directional cultural influence of a new, dominant culture upon an existing, weaker culture. It does not happen quickly nor consistently across a specific locale. Architectural acculturation has been studied for numerous ethnic groups in America but not specifically for the initial Dutch settlers of New Netherland and the English who supplanted them.[4] In the past, some scholars have suggested that with the English takeover, Dutch cultural and building traditions quickly disappeared but acculturation is a slow process and buildings reflecting one heritage do not necessarily disappear quickly when people of another heritage arrive.
Whatever Bullivant’s expectations were, we can use documents surviving from the New Netherland era and his diary to assess how long the architectural traditions established by the settlers of New Netherland lasted. All evidence suggests that, far from an immediate adoption of English architectural forms, Netherlandic traditions persisted for several generations after 1664.[5]
Bullivant’s letters of introduction put him into contact with various important people in New York City. Governor Benjamin Fletcher entertained Bullivant while he was in the city and took him to the first Trinity Church while it was under construction. Bullivant described it as the first English church to be built from the ground up and after what he referred to as the “English fashion” and made of brownstone and brick with a large square steeple over the west end.[6] The church’s construction has been depicted as one of three crucial steps by which the English truly started to assert control over the colony, the other two being William Bradford’s launch of an English press in 1693 and the establishment of the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts at the turn of the century.[7] Governor Fletcher also introduced Bullivant to Abraham de Peyster, who was of Dutch-Huguenot descent and was born in New Amsterdam around 1657.[8] De Peyster had been mayor of New York City from 1691 to 1695 and according to Bullivant had recently built himself “a noble building of the newest English fashion.”[9] De Peyster’s house can be described as a traditional Georgian-style mansion, shaped by architectural trends that can ultimately be traced back to the Renaissance. But was De Peyster’s new home truly rooted in English fashions? With both English and Dutch building rooted in a common Renaissance tradition, it is possible that the construction was inspired as much by Dutch as by English trends. And, in any case, late 17th-century English architecture was likely influenced by 17th-century architecture from the Dutch Republic, especially after William of Orange came to the throne in 1688 together with Mary Stuart.
But Bullivant not only commented on De Peyster’s new house but also on some of the other architecture in New York City. According to Bullivant, the “auncient buildings were very meane,” but the newer building stock had much going for itself:
Most of theyr new buildings are magnificent enough, ye fronts of red and yallow (or flanders) brick Lookeing very prettily, some of them are 6 stories high & built with a Gable end to ye front & so by Consequence make Very narrow garratts. The 3d story is usually a warehouse, and over it a Crane for hawleing up goods. The Lower part is comonly Very substantiall & neate. The Sealeing usually of well smoothed boards, betwixt Joyces as large as our Brest sumers, & kept so cleane by frequent washing with soape & sand, that indeed makes the Roome very pleasant. The windows are high & large, as are the stories, ten or 12 foot ye first the casements of wood at bottom windows, and without, strong and thick shutters. The chimneys without Jawmes, hanging like the Topp of a pulpit, but usually a good rich fringed callico, or other stuffe halfe a yard deep at ye edges, with Dutch tyles on each side of the fire place, carried very High They also tyle theyr sides of ye staircase, and bottom of windows … most bricked houses have ye date of the yeare on them, contrived of Iron cramps to hold in ye timber to the walls.[10]
Brace from the Dutch Republic with a carved corbel piece (photo by author)
What Bullivant described was a traditional type of Netherlandic architecture: tall and narrow buildings with brick façades and the gable end facing the street, with living quarters on the lower floors and storage capacity above. Bullivant mentioned ceiling joists as large as the summer beams in English houses. These large ceiling joists were part of the structural bent system that lay at the core of Netherlandic architecture and determined the framing techniques and building design in the Low Countries well into the 17th century. Each bent consisted of two principal posts connected by a girder, or tie beam. Braces reinforced the joint between each of the principal posts and the girder to prevent racking due to wind forces. Surprisingly, Bullivant did not mention the actual braces that not only had a structural function but also an aesthetic one. The aesthetic function was similar to that of the summer beam in English architecture with its variety of chamfers and chamfer stops. The braces remained visible within the living spaces of the typical house and in the Dutch Republic carpenters often added a carved corbel piece or shaped them in an S-curve to ornament them. It is possible that in the houses Bullivant saw, the posts had been replaced by load-bearing walls and only the large ceiling joists had survived. A similar structural evolution had also taken place in the Dutch Republic during the 17th century.
Bullivant also mentioned ceiling heights on the first floor of ten to twelve feet. Several building contracts survive from New Netherland that indicate specific ceiling heights that ranged from eight to twelve feet. These tall ceilings were a vestige from the days before chimneys when smoke from an open fire was allowed to escape through the rafters. Even after the introduction of hearths and chimneys, the high ceilings on the first floor of houses in the Dutch Republic had remained. This allowed owners to add partial basements without losing too much headroom, creating a so-called upper-chamber on the first floor, known as a boven kamer or opkamer in Dutch.[11] A contract between Jeuriaen Hendricksen and Adriaen Dircksen Coen from New Netherland, from 1649, for instance, required the ceiling height on the first floor to be eleven feet, with an upper-chamber (boven kamer) of nine feet, indicating that its floor level was two feet above the rest of the ground floor. The presence of an upper-chamber usually indicated the existence of a cellar underneath.[12]
The large windows that Bullivant described with their “casements of wood” and “strong and thick shutters,” also had a Netherlandic heritage, and were probably a type of crossbar window known as a kruiskozijn in Dutch. It consisted of two shuttered openings topped by two glazed openings. The nature of this type of window was very modular. Cut in half horizontally it would create a two-light frame known as a bolkozijn. Cut in half vertically it created a two-light frame, known as a kloosterkozijn. The width of the crossbar window was determined by the size of the leaded-glass panels, which initially limited the width of the windows to about five feet, including the frames, and the window was about twice as tall as it was wide.[13] These large windows combined with ceiling heights of ten to twelve feet high on the first floor created light and airy living spaces. These were not the type of dark and low-ceilinged homes so often suggested for the dwellings of the early settlers.
Jambless fireplace at the Luykas van Alen House, ca. 1737 (photo by author)
Bullivant also commented on the jambless fireplaces with smoke hoods that reminded him of the sounding board of a pulpit and the use of a valance and Dutch tiles, again features associated with a Netherlandic heritage. Finally, Bullivant described the wall anchors that had both a functional and decorative purpose, securing the façade to the structural frame of the house and sometimes displaying the date of construction.
Wall anchors at the Luykas van Alen House, ca. 1737 (photo by author)
Bullivant accompanied his description of New York City with a small sketch of “ye Fort & City of N.Y.” It is very schematic and shows the tip of Manhattan Island with the location of the fort and the city. Below this Bullivant sketched six narrow buildings, some with three stories, some with six. Two of the buildings have six floors — following Bullivant’s written description of some of the houses — and a jagged roofline that could indicate stepped gable ends.[14]
Bullivant perfectly describes a 17th-century Netherlandic dwelling house in New York City, showing that the cultural patterns established by the initial Dutch settlers remained vibrant decades after the English conquest. Numerous other sources from both the 17th and 18th-century corroborate Bullivant’s observations. One of them is a drawing by the Swiss naturalist Pierre Eugene du Simitière. Du Simitière’s drawing of three houses on a street in New York City done in circa 1767, a century after the English conquest, confirms much of Bullivant’s description.[15] The far left of the drawing shows a five-story building with the stepped gable end facing the street. A hoist beam in the gable top allows the owners to haul goods up to the upper floors. The doors on the third and fourth floors, that allow for easier access, also confirm the storage function of the upper floors. The iron clamps, or wall anchors, tie the exterior walls into the underlying structural system. The (date) anchors on the building in Du Simitière’s drawing suggest it was completed in 1689 and would have been fairly new by the time of Bullivant’s visit. The only two anchors visible on the building next to it, a “1” and “7” indicate that this practice at least continued into the early 1700s.
The combination of Dr. Bullivant’s travel diary, du Simitière’s drawing and surviving 17th-century building contracts from New Netherland make it clear that a definitive type of Netherlandic architecture survived in New York City and other parts of the former Dutch colony of New Netherland long after their control over the territory ended in 1664. The initial settlers of New Netherland likely “brought with them a blueprint—in their minds—for recreating the culture they had left behind” based on Netherlandic prototypes.[16] Regional variations must have proliferated as typical Dutch building materials were not always available and Dutch settlements were often distant from one another. The acculturation experienced by the settlers of New Netherland, their new English neighbors, and the descendants of both waves of immigrants was not as linear and one-directional as scholars have previously assumed; there was more of an “uneven and reciprocal nature” in the interactions between the two cultures.[17] In isolated areas in upstate New York, these Netherlandic traditions probably lasted longer. In some cases, into the 18th century and even the early 19th century. Whereas, in settlements closer to New York City, builders and their clients may have opted to follow the more current English trends in architecture either in an effort to recreate the built environment of their homeland or to fit in. In some cases, the latter may have started soon after the English take over in 1664, depending on the vested interest of the individual in the new regime.
The Dutch West India Company established a viable society in New Netherland between 1624 and 1664. As Bullivant’s late 17th century account makes clear, the hand-over to the English in 1664 did not have an immediate effect on the architecture. Indeed, in the early stages of acculturation, the original Dutch settlers likely influenced the architectural styles of new buildings contracted for the English arrivals because the available craftsmen were steeped in Netherlandic traditions and were accustomed to using the materials that those designs required. It would take the new English settlers several decades to slowly put their own architectural imprint on the city they named New York.
Jeroen van den Hurk is an assistant professor of Cultural and Historical Preservation at Salve Regina University. He researches Colonial American and early modern European architectural history, urbanism, and historic preservation.
[1] Wayne Andrews, “A Glance at New York in 1697: The Travel Diary of Dr. Benjamin Bullivant,” New-York Historical Society Quarterly, Vol. 11. No. 1, (Jan. 1956): 55-73.
[2] https://www.loc.gov/item/2006691546/
[3] Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America. Cornell Paperbacks. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009, 32.
[4] Edward A. Chappell, “Acculturation in the Shenandoah Valley: Rhenish Houses of the Massanutten Settlement,” in Common Places: Readings in American Vernacular Architecture, ed. Dell Upton and John Michael Vlach. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986, 27-57. See also Scott T. Swank, “The Germanic Fragment,” in Scott T. Swank, et al., Arts of the Pennsylvania Germans. New York: W. W. Norton, 1983, and Gabrielle Lanier, The Delaware Valley in the Early Republic. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, specifically Chapter 2, “Ethnic Perceptions, Ethnic Landscapes.”
[5] It is important to make a distinction between Dutch and Netherlandic. The architectural traditions carried over by the settlers of New Netherland were common practice in areas that extended beyond the borders of the Dutch Republic, into parts of what are now Germany, Belgium, and northern France.
[6] Andrews, “A Glance at New York in 1697,” 62.
[7] See Joyce D. Goodfriend, “The Dutch in 17th-century New York City: Minority or majority?,” in From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550-1750, ed. Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (London and Brighton: The Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland and Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 306-12.
[8] Abraham de Peyster was the oldest son of Johannes de Peyster, who was the son of Huguenot refugees. Johannes de Peyster was born in Haarlem, in the province of North Holland in the Dutch Republic in 1600. Johannes’ parents had fled France after the St. Bartholomew massacre of 1572 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_de_Peyster — September 27, 2020).
[9] Andrews, “A Glance at New York in 1697,” 63. De Peyster had his house built around 1695.
[10] Quoted by Andrews, “A Glance at New York in 1697,” 65.
[11] Jeroen van den Hurk, “Building a House in New Netherland: Documentary Sources for New Netherlandic Architecture, 1624-64,” in From De Halve Maen to KLM: 400 Years of Dutch-American Exchange, Nodus
Publikationen, Münster, 2008, 30-31.
[12] A. J. F. van Laer, New York Historical Manuscripts: Dutch, Vol. 3, Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1648-1660. Edited with added indexes by Kenneth Scott and Kenn Stryker-Rodda, Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974, 203-05.
[13] H. J. Zantkuijl, Bouwen in Amsterdam: Het Woonhuis in de Stad. Amsterdam: Vereniging Vrienden van de Amsterdamse Binnenstad, Gemeentelijk Bureau Monumentenzorg/Gemeentearchief Amsterdam, Architectura & Natura. 3rd reprint, 1997, 205.
[14] Andrews, “A Glance at New York in 1697,” 63.
[15] http://nc-chap.org/pdfs/tile_house5.pdf, 158.
[16] James Deetz. In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life, (1977) (expanded and rev. ed. New York: Anchor Books, 1996), 58.
[17] Lanier, The Delaware Valley in the Early Republic, 35.