Touring Gotham's Archaeological Past: 8 Self-Guided Walking Tours through New York City
Diana diZerega Wall
Language: English
Pages: 226
ISBN: B002C74M8U
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This pocket-sized guidebook takes the reader on eight walking tours to archaeological sites throughout the boroughs of New York City and presents a new way of exploring the city through the rich history that lies buried beneath it. Generously illustrated and replete with maps, the tours are designed to explore both ancient times and modern space.
On these tours, readers will see where archaeologists have discovered evidence of the earliest New Yorkers, the Native Americans who arrived at least 11,000 years ago. They will learn about thousand-year-old trading routes, sacred burial grounds, and seventeenth-century villages. They will also see sites that reveal details of the lives of colonial farmers and merchants, enslaved Africans, Revolutionary War soldiers, and nineteenth-century hotel keepers, grocers, and housewives.
Some tours bring readers to popular tourist attractions (the Statue of Liberty and the Wall Street district, for example) and present them in a new light. Others center on places that even the most seasoned New Yorker has never seen—colonial houses, a working farm, out-of-the-way parks, and remote beaches—often providing beautiful and unexpected views from the city’s vast shoreline.
A celebration of New York City’s past and its present, this unique book will intrigue everyone interested in the city and its history.
on the left is 85 Broad Street, the red conglomerate building that now houses the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs, the investment bankers. Continue toward the next corner, Coenties Alley, and stop when you reach the upright bronze plaque by the curb, commemorating the excavation of the Stadt Huys Block. This block, where New Amsterdam’s Stadt Huys or State House (and hence New York’s first city hall) was located in the seventeenth century, is the site of the first large-scale
of Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Hudson River, just beyond the Henry Hudson Bridge. Site 3. Inwood Hill Nature Center Leaving Shorakapok Rock, walk around the tidal marsh (where you might see nesting swans, as well as egrets and ducks) to the Inwood Hill Nature Center. The center has small but interesting displays on the importance of tidal marshes, local geology, and the people who once lived here. Call 212-304-2365 for hours and information about special programs. Site 4. Seaman Avenue at
file with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. ———. 1996b. Archaeological Evaluation: (Stage 1A Documentary Study) Former Naval Station (NAVSTA) New York, Navy Yard Annex Site, Brooklyn, New York. Submitted to the U.S. Department of the Navy, Northern Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Report on file with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission. ———. 1999. State of the Research: Naval Hospital Cemetery Historical Documentation, Naval Station Brooklyn,
groups New Amersfoort (Flatlands), 177, 182, 186 New Amsterdam, 7, 25, 27, 105, 143; economy of, 113; English Anabaptists and, 172; Heermans warehouse, 28; Stadt Huys of, 31–32; town of Brooklyn and, 147; van Tienhoven property, 29–31, 30, 31. See also Dutch colony New Brooklyn, 153, 153, 154 New Netherland, 134, 182, 186 Newtown (Queens), 125, 127 Newtown Creek, 127 New York City: arrival of Europeans and Africans, x–xi; boroughs consolidated into Greater New York, 150; under British
and Canada took part in the ceremony. Publicly recognizing an early Delaware presence in this area and doing so at Ellis Island, the national symbol of subsequent European immigration, has enormous symbolic significance for Native peoples and other Americans, as well as for overseas visitors. The monument marking the reburial spot is a highly charged symbol of a new kind of American history, one in which both the ancient and the modern occupants are acknowledged as sharing a common ground, with