The Dutch landed in this region we now call New York very early, about 1613.
They formed a fur trading company in lower Manhattan called New Amsterdam and a northern outpost called New Haarlem after two of their cities back home. Then the Duke of York took over in 1664 and renamed it all for himself. That’s when the “New Haven-New London-New Hampshire Brit-influenced naming trend took over.
But Dutch influence is everywhere, from Amsterdam Avenue and New Amsterdam Beer to Spuyten Duyvil (spouting devil) and the word kill meaning water instead of murder, as in Fishkill, or Catskill or the Kill van Kull.
The Dutch left their architecture behind, too, and I found a “stepped gable” replica in Riverdale the other day.
This stock image below in brick is from the original Haarlem, a city in the north of the Netherlands and the namesake of that early Dutch outpost around 125th Street.
Dutch builders often set a roof-line in steps so the surfaces could support a plank end-to-end, creating a handy scaffold when the tile roof needed mending.
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