1683First Shearith Israel GraveyardArchitect: UnknownLocation: 55-57 St. James PlaceNew Amsterdam was a company town, a money-making enterprise, not a city upon a hill like the Boston of Puritan vision. Petrus Stuyvesant tried hard, though, to impose a strict kind of Calvinism over the colony, hounding the adherents of all faiths not consonant with the Dutch Reformed Church. He was not especially fond of Jews. The first ones arrived in the summer of 1654, with a group of twenty-three Sephardic Jews arriving later that year, fleeing the city of Recife after it had been recaptured by Portugal. When he tried to expel them, the Dutch West India Company rebuffed his efforts, reminding him that these Jews had defended Dutch interests in Brazil, and had non-trivial investments in the company. A victory? A small one. Jews wouldn’t have public worship until 1730, long after New Amsterdam became New York, and most of the settlers would eventually move away anyway. Nonetheless, they formed the nucleus of the Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. This was their cemetery—in spite of its name, the second. The location of the first (1656) has been lost to time; this one was hacked down to its present size thanks to multiple encroachments of building and street. Both were established well outside the comfort of city walls.A great detail from the National Register of Historic Places nomination form about Walter Jonas Judah, “the first American-born Jew to enroll in medical school”: Consistent with the Jewish aversion to the making of graven images, decoration [of graves] is limited to such stylized motifs as floral scrolls, rosettes, a pair of hands raised in benediction or a hand cutting off a flower. The one notable exception is a view of the angel of destruction branding a flaming sword over the city, whose silhouette is clearly depicted, while an ax, wielded by a hand emerging from a cloud, hews down the tree of life. This stone commemorates Walter Judah, a young medical student at Columbia College who sacrificed his life at the age of twenty in caring for victims of the yellow fever plague of 1798.
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1683
First Shearith Israel Graveyard

Architect: Unknown
Location: 55-57 St. James Place

New Amsterdam was a company town, a money-making enterprise, not a city upon a hill like the Boston of Puritan vision. Petrus Stuyvesant tried hard, though, to impose a strict kind of Calvinism over the colony, hounding the adherents of all faiths not consonant with the Dutch Reformed Church. He was not especially fond of Jews. The first ones arrived in the summer of 1654, with a group of twenty-three Sephardic Jews arriving later that year, fleeing the city of Recife after it had been recaptured by Portugal. When he tried to expel them, the Dutch West India Company rebuffed his efforts, reminding him that these Jews had defended Dutch interests in Brazil, and had non-trivial investments in the company. A victory? A small one. Jews wouldn’t have public worship until 1730, long after New Amsterdam became New York, and most of the settlers would eventually move away anyway. Nonetheless, they formed the nucleus of the Congregation Shearith Israel, the oldest Jewish congregation in the United States. This was their cemetery—in spite of its name, the second. The location of the first (1656) has been lost to time; this one was hacked down to its present size thanks to multiple encroachments of building and street. Both were established well outside the comfort of city walls.

A great detail from the National Register of Historic Places nomination form about Walter Jonas Judah, “the first American-born Jew to enroll in medical school”:

Consistent with the Jewish aversion to the making of graven images, decoration [of graves] is limited to such stylized motifs as floral scrolls, rosettes, a pair of hands raised in benediction or a hand cutting off a flower. The one notable exception is a view of the angel of destruction branding a flaming sword over the city, whose silhouette is clearly depicted, while an ax, wielded by a hand emerging from a cloud, hews down the tree of life. This stone commemorates Walter Judah, a young medical student at Columbia College who sacrificed his life at the age of twenty in caring for victims of the yellow fever plague of 1798.
ca. 1681Trinity Church GraveyardArchitect: UnknownLocation: Broadway at Wall StreetNear as I can make out, Trinity’s oldest gravestone—the one on the left—says: HERE LYEST THE BOD OF RICHARD CHURCHER THE SON OF WM M CHURCHER WHO DEIED 5TH DAY OF AO S 16 81 OF AGE 5 YEARS It likely belonged to a graveyard of unknown provenance that predates the charter of Trinity’s parish (1697) and the construction of its first church (1698); this graveyard was transferred to the church a few years later. Mary French’s young but very impressive cemetery blog quotes ecclesiastical records that claim this graveyard was originally about thirty feet below its current level (roughly the same level as Trinity Place is today, maybe?), and that successive internments of thousands of people eventually raised it to the level it’s at today. Many of the city’s most illustrious citizens were buried here, both before and after new burials below Canal Street were outlawed in 1823: John Peter Zenger. Alexander Hamilton. Robert Fulton. John Jacob Astor.
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ca. 1681
Trinity Church Graveyard

Architect: Unknown
Location: Broadway at Wall Street

Near as I can make out, Trinity’s oldest gravestone—the one on the left—says:

HERE LYEST THE BOD OF RICHARD CHURCHER THE SON OF WM M CHURCHER WHO DEIED 5TH DAY OF AO S 16 81 OF AGE 5 YEARS

It likely belonged to a graveyard of unknown provenance that predates the charter of Trinity’s parish (1697) and the construction of its first church (1698); this graveyard was transferred to the church a few years later. Mary French’s young but very impressive cemetery blog quotes ecclesiastical records that claim this graveyard was originally about thirty feet below its current level (roughly the same level as Trinity Place is today, maybe?), and that successive internments of thousands of people eventually raised it to the level it’s at today. Many of the city’s most illustrious citizens were buried here, both before and after new burials below Canal Street were outlawed in 1823: John Peter Zenger. Alexander Hamilton. Robert Fulton. John Jacob Astor.

1670Lovelace TavernArchitect: UnknownLocation: South of 85 Broad Street85 Broad Street destroyed a bit of New York history, and unearthed another. Before construction began in 1979, archeologists were allowed to pick over the site. They hoped to find evidence of the Stadt Huys (c. 1642), a five-story tavern that became our first City Hall. Instead, they discovered the foundation of Lovelace Tavern, not just a neighbor to the Stadt Huys but virtually an adjunct, connected to it via a doorway, and later its brief replacement when it started falling apart. Made of stone, both taverns were actually pretty durable, as Manhattan’s earliest buildings go. Most were made of wood and reed—sometimes even the chimneys were wooden, if you can believe that. (Also scarcely believable: in 1648, New Amsterdam’s Director-General, Peter Stuyvesant, groused that a quarter of all structures in the mid-1600s colony were taverns.) Today you can see the Lovelace’s remnants in a sort of underground vitrine next to 85 Broad, with its outline and that of the Stadt Huys completed by paving bricks.
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1670
Lovelace Tavern

Architect: Unknown
Location: South of 85 Broad Street

85 Broad Street destroyed a bit of New York history, and unearthed another. Before construction began in 1979, archeologists were allowed to pick over the site. They hoped to find evidence of the Stadt Huys (c. 1642), a five-story tavern that became our first City Hall. Instead, they discovered the foundation of Lovelace Tavern, not just a neighbor to the Stadt Huys but virtually an adjunct, connected to it via a doorway, and later its brief replacement when it started falling apart. Made of stone, both taverns were actually pretty durable, as Manhattan’s earliest buildings go. Most were made of wood and reed—sometimes even the chimneys were wooden, if you can believe that. (Also scarcely believable: in 1648, New Amsterdam’s Director-General, Peter Stuyvesant, groused that a quarter of all structures in the mid-1600s colony were taverns.)

Today you can see the Lovelace’s remnants in a sort of underground vitrine next to 85 Broad, with its outline and that of the Stadt Huys completed by paving bricks.

ca. 1660Street Plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New YorkArchitect: Crijn Fredericksz and Jacques CortelyouLocation: Beaver, Bridge, Broad Streets, Broadway, Exchange Place, Hanover Square, Hanover and Marketfield Streets, Mill Lane, New, Pearl, South William, Stone, Whitehall, Wall and William Streets.Down here, Broadway (before 1600) followed a path used by the indigenous Lenape. Before the island’s shape was plumped out by landfill, Pearl Street (c. 1639) followed the shoreline; it was named for oysters that filled the East River, even though they didn’t actually make pearls. Wall Street (c. 1653) was the site of (yes) a defensive wall. Broad Street (c. 1664) was broad because it had a canal run through it. Save for a handful of streets, there is barely anything in the Manhattan cityscape that betrays the presence of the Dutch or dates before 1776. So precious are they that when a fragment of Stone Street (c. 1653)—Manhattan’s first paved road—was demapped to make way for Goldman Sachs’ headquarters at 85 Broad, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission took the unusual step of landmarking all or part of sixteen Manhattan streets, most in place in some form before the English took New Amsterdam in 1664. (And after all that trouble, today 85 Broad is virtually empty: Goldman moved to 200 West Street last year.)
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ca. 1660
Street Plan of New Amsterdam and Colonial New York

Architect: Crijn Fredericksz and Jacques Cortelyou
Location: Beaver, Bridge, Broad Streets, Broadway, Exchange Place, Hanover Square, Hanover and Marketfield Streets, Mill Lane, New, Pearl, South William, Stone, Whitehall, Wall and William Streets.

Down here, Broadway (before 1600) followed a path used by the indigenous Lenape. Before the island’s shape was plumped out by landfill, Pearl Street (c. 1639) followed the shoreline; it was named for oysters that filled the East River, even though they didn’t actually make pearls. Wall Street (c. 1653) was the site of (yes) a defensive wall. Broad Street (c. 1664) was broad because it had a canal run through it. Save for a handful of streets, there is barely anything in the Manhattan cityscape that betrays the presence of the Dutch or dates before 1776. So precious are they that when a fragment of Stone Street (c. 1653)—Manhattan’s first paved road—was demapped to make way for Goldman Sachs’ headquarters at 85 Broad, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission took the unusual step of landmarking all or part of sixteen Manhattan streets, most in place in some form before the English took New Amsterdam in 1664. (And after all that trouble, today 85 Broad is virtually empty: Goldman moved to 200 West Street last year.)