Walking Tour: Medieval Lower Manhattan

Meet across the street from Trinity Church at 89 Broadway. Please arrive 15 minutes before the start of the tour.

New York City was originally known as New Amsterdam when it was founded in 1625 as a trading and resupply post for The Netherland’s West India Trading Company. In 1664, the British took control of New Amsterdam and changed its name to New York City. It became a key city in England’s expansionist colonization of North America, yet the Dutch culture of commerce and trade is embedded in the core of NYC’s purpose and history. The downtown district is rich in the city’s historic development of buildings, national political history, and the evolution of a capitalist economy centered on Wall Street. We will walk the circumference of New Amsterdam as it existed in 1664—sites include Wall Street, the NY Stock Exchange, Fraunces Tavern, India House, and Federal Hall National Memorial. This walking tour highlights the contrast in urban form actualized during the Netherlands' transition into its late Medieval and Renaissance eras and into the 1811 NYC Commissioners’ City Plan—the city’s famous street grid.