New York - The most beautiful route to Manhattan is still the one Henry Hudson used when he headed for the island 400 years ago. The English captain's arrival on the Dutch three-master Halve Maen (Half Moon) will be grandly celebrated in the Big Apple with parties, parades, concerts and exhibits later this year. Even routine travellers to New York City will have an opportunity to rediscover it, and not just through the eyes of the Dutch. New York being as multicultural and multiethnic as it is, other nationalities will have reasons to celebrate.
Historian Seth Kamil, founder and director of Big Onion Walking Tours, said New York's DNA is Dutch thanks to Hudson and his Amsterdam-based sponsor, the Dutch East India Company, but other countries, including Germany were represented in the city early on.
Kamil's tour company is offering a special tour for the 400 year anniversary beginning south of Broadway, which back then snaked its way through thick forest. The Dutch called it "de breede weg."
To begin a visit tracing the Dutch influence on Manhattan, Kamil recommends the ferry, which is free and which runs at half-hour intervals between the southern tip of the island and Staten Island. It offers the best view of the southern skyline. Cameras start clicking as soon as the ferry is far enough away from the skyscraper jungle for the scene to fit into viewfinders.
Some New Yorkers, however, don't like to take in the scene, which was once dominated by the twin towers of the World Trade Centre. Passengers on the ferry on September 11, 2001 witnessed the jets ramming the towers. The terrorists who struck that day didn't succeed in their desire to hurt the way of life that are symbols of the city: openness and tolerance.
Those qualities are definitely linked to the city's Dutch DNA. The Dutch in the 17th century possessed the most culturally multifaceted and liberal society in the world, said Russell Shorto, author of New York - Island in the Middle of the World. They took those qualities with them to the new settlement. The book makes good reading on a trip to New York.
There are several traces of the Dutch throughout New York's history. School children learn that the Bronx got its name from Jonas Bronck, a Dutch captain, who was the first European to settle in the Bronx in 1639. Brooklyn once had the Dutch name Breukelen.
Four hundred years after Hudson arrived on September 11, 1609 on the island named Mannahata by the Lenape Indians, all things there are Dutch. TheMetropolitan Museum of Art is showing Dutch masterworks and the Museum of the City of New York will have an exhibit about Hudson. The high point of the celebration will be NYC 400 Week from September 8-13 when a harbour party is planned.
Several event organizers are planning "Holland on the Hudson" events. There will be kayak and sailing tours all the way to Albany, the capital of New York state. The Dutch built a fort there in 1624 to ensure fur trade with the Indians and to ward off competition from other colonizing countries.
George Fertitta, head of the city's official tourism agency NYC & Company, said New York will be celebrating its multifaceted culture, tolerance, liberality and optimism during the anniversary events. Fertitta said Germans should also celebrate heartily with New Yorkers and recall Peter Minuit, who is remembered with a monument in Battery Park as one of the founding fathers of the city.
Born in 1584 in Wesel on the Rhine River, Minuit grew up speaking German. He travelled on one of the first settler ships to land in Manhattan and ultimately became governor. In that position he signed the legendary treaty in which the Lenape Indians received 60 guldens for the transfer of usage rights for all of Manhattan to the Dutch.
As generous and liberal as the founders of New York might have been, they were also true capitalists. The magazine TimeOut highlights New Yorkers' love of a good deal and their worship at the altar of money in its jubilee edition. It's no wonder that the New York Stock Exchange has existed on Wall Street in lower Manhattan since 1611 and is the oldest securities exchange in the world.
A side trip to the East Village can be a final place to find traces of the Dutch in New York. In the garden of St Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery, a tomb slab and a monument recall the most famous resident of the Dutch-American colony: Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch director general of the colony.
He once had the largest farm on the island and in 1664 when the island was ceded to the British he wrested away several asset guarantees for the Dutch and other settlers of the colony. Thus the Dutch roots along the Hudson River might be somewhat overgrown, but they were never pulled out.
Internet: www.nycgo.com, www.ny400.org, www.bigonion.com, www.henryhudson.com, www.coachusa.com/nycducks.
