Bill's Brownstone
Wander through New York's Past and Present with
the author of The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan
Dutch Days
While working on The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan, I spent years looking into the Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam. Here I've pulled together everything in the brownstone related to New York's Dutch heritage plus some entertaining spots around the web.- Bill
Mevrouw's Manhattan: A self-guided walking tour of lower Manhattan where remnants of New Amsterdam are written in the streetscape. With block by block stories of places and people from the Dutch era.
New Amsterdammers: Vignettes of the people who settled the Hudson Valley when the Dutch ruled the place. Simple snapshots but together they give the flavor of the place.
New York's First Whore: Griet Reyniers arrived as mistress of a Dutch Director but turned into whore of the rabble.
The Turk: Anthony van Salee's skin showed the swarthy hue of his Moroccan mother but he acted more like the pirate his Dutch father turned into.
New York's First Embezzler: Cornelis van Tienhoven started a long tradition in city that would become the financial capital of the world.
An Early Member of New York's Gay Community: If only Harmen van den Bogaert had lived four hundred years later. A sterling example of how mores have change.
Broken Chain: How the Dutch, the Mohicans and the Mohawks Remembered Early Encounters on the Hudson.
Sex and the City - The Early Years: In this bawdy look at Dutch Manhattan, meet New York's first woman on the prowl and many more of the libertine characters who called New Amsterdam home.
The Company's Reward: The brilliant career and startling fall of Justus Schouten, a Dutchman in Siam, 1620 to 1636.
The Island at the Center of the World. In its title, Russell Shorto's history might capture how modern-day New Yorkers view their city, but he's giving us an enlightening romp through our Dutch past.
City of Dreams. Beverly Swerling's 2001 novel follows generations of a New York medical family from Dutch days through the arrival of George Washington after the Revolutionary War.
New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. Dutch scholar Jaap Jacobs's mammoth treatise for serious historians and very interested lay people.
The Embarrassment of Riches. Simon Schama's lively interpretation of Dutch culture in the Golden Age of the 17th Century, delightfully brought to life with illustrations of hundreds of Dutch paintings.
Plain Lives in a Golden Age. A. Th. Van Deursen is not as exhaustive as Schama but he presents a lively picture of how ordinary people lived during the Netherlands' Golden Age.
The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan. I can't resist a plug for my own book, a story of New Amsterdam by the sharpest observer of Manhattan society since Dutchmen bought the island, Mevrouw Jackie Lambert.
A Virtual Tour of New Netherland. The New Netherland Institute with help from Russell Shorto developed this interactive tour of New Netherland, which extended from the upper Hudson Valley and Connecticut to Delaware.
Dutch Americans. The New Netherland Institute maintains an intriguing list of well-known Dutch Americans with mini-biographaies. Tom Brokaw, David Petraeus, Meryl Streep, Bruce Springsteen ...
Len Tantillo An architectural illustrator turned fine artist, Len Tantillo recreates Dutch New York through paintings and prints of life on the Hudson.
Bill's Book
The Mevrouw Who
Saved Manhattan
A Novel of New Amsterdam
like etchings by
Van Ostade and Steen."
-- Charles Wendell, Ph.D.,
President of the
New Netherland Institute
on a madcap ride through
New York history.
More about the book.
Amazon
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and the Nook
and see what you think
laughing out loud."
right on the money."
better ... toward a
highly satisfying resolution."