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Mapping Early New York City
Contributing teacher:
Andrew Meyers
Time period: 1625–1825
Overview
The goal of this activity is to permit your students to imagine New York City history in three dimensions. Because Professor Kenneth T. Jackson's e-seminar is place-based, so too is this activity, in which the students will research a historical topic attached to a specific time (1625–1825) and a specific place, Lower Manhattan below City Hall.
The key to this activity is helping the students choose a topic that can be located in time (1625–1825) and place (Lower Manhattan below City Hall). Other time periods and neighborhoods of New York City may also be selected, but early New York and Lower Manhattan work well because the sites are in a small, concentrated area. Urge students to choose sites that interest them and around which they can fashion not just a report, but an argument or thesis that reveals something significant about New York City. (See the Discussion Questions below.)
Recommended Resources
This activity benefits from access to online mapmaking materials. If you do not have the resources to do the work online, or if you prefer that students do the work by hand, the online mapmaking can be replaced with conventional maps from books.
Homberger, Eric. Historical Atlas of New York City. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1994.
 You can view an online interactive map of New York City at the Mapsites.com Web site.
The Assignment
As Professor Jackson states, "New York is North America's oldest city." While there are in fact older settlements, New York is the oldest continuously occupied city. Yet we do not think of "history" when we think of New York. That is because, in some sense, "history is for losers," meaning that only when a place has passed its prime does it begin to be concerned with its past. Because New York's identity is caught up in notions of success, mobility, and progress, it is easy to lose sight of the city's historical significance.
The goal of this activity is to reclaim New York City's history by creating a "tour" of early New York from its pre-colonization settlement by the Native Americans, through its colonization as New Amsterdam by the Dutch and then New York by the British, to its emergence as a center of America's political and economic power in the early 1800s.
Day One
In consultation with the teacher, each student will choose and research a topic using the Web and the sources listed below. (The teacher will recommend specific sources.) Each student will write a descriptive paper on his or her topic, which the teacher will return with suggestions for improvement before the simulation begins. The paper should include a short description of a historical person, event, group, custom, activity, movement, artwork, or piece of literature (see "Choosing a Topic," below).
Since the students probably are not in New York, we will create a virtual tour of the city using online or print mapmaking materials.
You can view a detail of lower Manhattan at the Mapsites.com Web site.
You can read directions on how to conduct research for the tour at the Mapsites.com Web site.
Choosing a Topic
Next, each student should choose a topic from those below, or choose one of his or her own in consultation with the teacher:
1. New York and the Geography of Commerce
2. Native American Settlement Patterns
3. The Encounter Between Lenape and Dutch
4. New York Exceptionalism: Entrepôt and Entrepreneurs
5. The Battery and New Amsterdam
6. Peter Stuyvesant and New Amsterdam's Leadership
7. The Debate over Lord Cornbury: New York's First Cross-Dresser?
8. The Customs House on the Battery and New York's Global Position
9. Leisler's Rebellion: Culture and Class in Early New York
10. Slavery and the Slave Trade in New York
11. Slave Rebellions in New York
12. Pledging Allegiance: New York Loyalism and the American Revolution
13. The McComb Mansion: Washington's First "White House"
14. Alexander Hamilton and the Rise of Wall Street
15. Trinity Church: High Church Celebrity
16. Dueling Capitals: New York and Washington, D.C.
17. Federal Hall and the Birth of Federalism
18. Gridded City: Determinants of New York's Form in the Nineteenth Century
19. The Erie Canal and New York's Rise: Boosterism
Discussion Questions
Once the students have each chosen a topic, they should take a look at the questions below and see if they can answer some of them using their research:
1. How did the geology and geography of the New York area determine its history as America's earliest continuous settlement? As entrepôt? As periphery and center? As melting pot?
2. How did Native American and European attitudes toward land and commerce differ? How did these differences undermine Native American independence and relations between the indigenous peoples and the European colonizers?
3. What is the significance of the legendary $24 purchase of Manhattan Island? How does the action reflect the enduring legacy of New Amsterdam's founding?
4. How was the New Amsterdam of Peter Stuyvesant (c. 1610–72) unique among the colonies of the period? How was it a harbinger of the American Dream? How did New Amsterdam/New York begin to move from the periphery to the center? Periphery of what? Center of what?
5. How and why was New York City's experience of the American Revolution exceptional?
6. How did New York become the first capital of the United States under the Constitution? How did New York's prominence affect the nature of the new republic? How did New York move from periphery to center in the 1790s?
7. How did improvements in New York State's infrastructure, such as the city's grid system (1811), the construction of the Erie Canal in upstate New York (1825), and the creation of the Croton Water System north of the city (1830s), establish New York City as a center of business activity, immigration, and urbanization?
Day Two
Now it's time to choose a location. Using the print or online materials, each student should find a location on the map of Lower Manhattan that connects him or her to the topic that will be researched.
You can view a detail of lower Manhattan at the Mapsites.com Web site.
They may need to do further research or modify their topic in order to find a relevant location on the map. Then each should create a document outlining the topic and chosen location. (Note: This document should be no more than a single-spaced half page.)
You can post Microsoft Word documents at the Mapsites.com Web site. Students should follow the instructions on the Web site. You can then view each tour that has been created online.
After the Activity
Students should then write a short essay establishing the historical significance of the chosen topic and mapped location within the larger context of New York City and American history. Each should imagine that he or she is the historian for the 1625–1825 Gray Line tour. The supervisor has restricted the tour to five sites. Which sites will each student select, and why? (Note: Students may not pick their own site.)
References
Burrows, Edwin and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Blackmar, Elizabeth and Roy Rosenzweig. The Park and the People. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Ellis, Edward Robb. The Epic of New York City. New York: Coward-McCann, 1966.
Homberger, Eric. Historical Atlas of New York City. New York: H. Holt and Co., 1994.
Jackson, Kenneth T., ed. The Encyclopedia of New York City. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995.
New York: A Documentary Film, dir. Ric Burns, 870 min., Steeplechase Films, 1999.
Web Sites
"General New York City Links" at Mapsites.com
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