The City Plan of New Amsterdam, New York
The colonial city of New Amsterdam founded by the Dutch in 1624, which later became part of New York City, vividly demonstrates the role that architecture can play both in determining and preserving history. The original city plan of New Amsterdam featured a fort at the tip of the island, where the entrance to the city was located. The rest of the city radiated out from this fort, illustrating the strategic importance of its location. When the fort became too broken down to serve its purpose, the city was captured and had to be conceded. Yet even today, the Dutch influence prevalent in the cityÆs architecture stands to tell the story of its origins.
The City Plan of New Amsterdam, New York
The city of New Amsterdam, which later became part of New York CityÆs Manhattan, started out with a carefully conceived, very explicit city plan, the Castello Plan (Fig. 1), brought over by the Dutch trading company that founded it in 1625. Figure 1.
ôAlthough it expanded in a haphazard fashion until the middle of the eighteenth century (a practice repeated in western towns and cities in the nineteenth century), what became the nation's largest city began as a planned environmentö (1).
New Amsterdam was the capital of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, and as such was a city of some importance when it was founded. One of the primary determiners of the city plan was the location of the fort at the end of Manhattan Island ôThe position of the fort at the end of the island naturally meant that the town would develop around it, the streets radiating northward from it and from the East River frontageö (2). This resulted in a city layout that resembled a ôsock, with the toes sticking out toward the harborö (2, Fig. 2).
The fort (Fig. 3) at that time had a dual function; it was both a military compound and a center for trading activity (3). Although the military function eventual...