Op mijn zoektocht naar de geschiedenis van NY, naar het New York Historical Society gegaan en daar was een vitrine met Objecten en de volgende tekst:
DUTCH NEW YORK
Before this city was New York, it was New Amsterdam—a remote New World trading outpost in a seventeenth—century global Dutch empire. Although Dutch citizens comprised a small portion of a larger, ethnically and racially diverse population, their customs prevailed. Canals ran through the streets like in Amsterdam, windmills and Dutch—style buildings dotted the landscape, and household furnishings recalled life in the Netherlands.
Despite the British takeover in I664—just four decades after the arrival of New Amsterdam’s first settlers—Dutch cultural and artistic traditionsendured. Threatened by the language and values of English colonials, New Yorkers of Dutch descent tightly embraced their heritage. Centuries later, New Amsterdam’s influence survives, not only in the many Dutch place names that remain, but in the multicultural and enterprising nature of the city itself.
This fragment comes from the pear tree which was brought from Holland as a sapling by Peter Stuyvesant (1592-1672), the last director-general of New Netherland. The tree was planted at Stuyvesant’s bouwery, or country estate, at what is now the northeast corner of Third Avenue and 13th Street. The tree stood until February, 1867, when a vehicle collided against it and sent it crashing to the ground.
