Rhinelander Sugar HouseSugar refineries, called sugar houses, were built in lower Manhattan during the mid to late 1700s to alleviate the need to import refined sugar from Europe. The sugar houses, with their small windows and low ceilings, were considered ideal by the British as prisons, and as on the prison ships in Wallabout Bay, conditions were notoriously inhumane, and may patriots died in captivity.

This sugar house stood at what is now Avenue of the Finest and Madison Street; its window was later incorporated in the Rhinelander Building, itself torn down in 1968. The window now stands in the pedestrian plaza behind the Municipal Building.As many as 800 Americans were crammed in a typical sugar house, suffering a tremendous amount of abuse and left with the choice of either starving or freezing to death. Conditions were so bad that many inmates carved messages and their names on the beams and walls. For years afterward these ‘last wills’ remained.

“Rhinelander's Sugar House & Residence, between William & Rose Sts. 'The last of the Sugar House & Prison of the Revolution.” By Emmet, Thomas Addis

Stop 1-Execution of Enslaved Africans

In 1712, Black rebels were accused of setting fire to a building in the middle of the city and attacking White colonists who tried to extinguish the blaze; soldiers from a nearby fort captured twenty-seven rebels. Six captives took their own lives and the others were executed.

Five PointsUntil 1808 this region was a swampy area near the Collect Pond (now Foley Square) and hosted a set of tanneries.  In 1808 the pond was filled and became Pearl Street. When the filling began to sink, a foul odor emerged which mace the living conditions of that neighborhood worse. As a consequence, the area became host to one of the world's most notorious tenements, known for its wretched living conditions and rampant crime, earning such names as "murderer's alley" and "den of thieves."

In the 1840’s, Baxter Street became host to German Jews and New York's first garment district.  Meanwhile, the neighborhood quickly grew to become the largest Irish community outside of Dublin itself. In the 1880s, the Italians began to arrive, populating an adjacent neighborhood that remains to this day.

In 1842, on a visit to the United States, English author Charles Dickens made sure to visit the notorious Five Points, and he wrote about it in his American Notes in the most scathing terms.  He described it as "reeking everywhere with dirt and filth," concluding that "all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here." Despite its dangerous and difficult conditions, Five Points mixed the residential, commercial, and industrial elements in an unprecedented fashion, bringing together a wide array of immigrants.

Immigrants used Five Points as a stepping stone to a better life in a new land and, nowadays, one can view the area not as a wretched slum but as a microcosm of the young city’s burgeoning and complex demographic.  As Walt Whitman wrote in 1842, (the same year that Charles Dickens wrote his American Notes), the inner-city residents are "not paupers and criminals, but the Republic's most needed asset, the wealth of stout poor men who will work.”

“The Five Points” by George Catlin, 1827.

In the 20th century, the area around Five Points was subsumed by a sprawling Chinatown, with the latest generation of immigrants beginning to create a new life afresh in Manhattan's historic downtown.

Shearith Israel NYC’s oldest extant cemetery and the only Jewish congregation in New York City from 1654 until 1825. During this entire span of history, all of the Jews of New York belonged to the congregation. Shearith Israel was founded by 23 Jews, mostly of Spanish and Portuguese origin. The earliest Jewish cemetery in the U.S. was recorded in 1656 in New Amsterdam where authorities granted the Shearith Israel Congregation “a little hook of land situated outside of this city for a burial place.” Its exact location is now unknown. The Congregation’s “second” cemetery, which is today known as the FIRST cemetery because it is the oldest surviving one, was purchased in 1683.

Stop 2-African Burial Ground

This map from 1755 shows the African American Burial ground in lower Manhattan. It is outside the city walls because Africans could not be buried inside the city limits. ---

The "Negros Burial Ground" near the Collect Pond, looking south.

By Stop 3-City Hall/The Commons

Bridewell

The Provost. Erected on the Common in 1759, it served for many years as the municipal jail. Some of its rooms held French prisoners during the Seven Years’ War. From 1776 to 1783 the British provost marshal

Source: From the NYPL Digital CollectionBridewell Prison was in what is now City Hall Park. It was designed by Theophilus Hardenbrook in 1775.  The jail, poorhouse and another building known as the new Bridewell were used by the British to house American prisoners of war. Construction was interrupted by the Declaration of Independence. The Bridewell, named for a London jail, was the most deadly of the prisons. It had no windows, only bars. The winter winds took the lives of hundreds of ill-fed patriots..

filled it was captured American officers as well as civilians charged with helping the rebellion. One prisoner, Captain Alexander Graydon, remembered it as “that engine for breaking hearts.”

Stop 4-St Paul’s and Hughson’s Tavern

Located on Broadway between Fulton and Vesey Streets in Lower Manhattan. It was built in 1766 and it Manhattan’s oldest public building in continuous use. George Washington worshipped here on

Source: http://maap.columbia.edu/mbl_place/4.html

Inauguration Day, April 30, 1789.

Hughson’s Tavern was on the waterfront in 1741. Its doors were open to blacks and poor whites, making it suspect during “The Great Negro Plot” of 1741. Today it is something else-what was once the location of docks for ships is now the site of the former World Trade Center.

Stop5-1712 Slave Rebellion

In the early 1700s, New York had one of the largest slave populations of any of England’s colonies. One out of every five New York residents was enslaved.

Slavery in New York differed from some of the colonies because there were no large plantations. Many of the enslaved

Source: http://gotham07.cleardev.com/c/?q=node/77

Africans were skilled workers, carpenters, stone masons, fishermen, and boat builders. These slaves lived and worked next to free and indentured whites, and some intermarried when they got their freedom.

No one knows for certain what caused the revolt that happened the night of April 6, 1712, but this much is known: Between 20 and 70 armed Africans set fire to a building. When white settlers tried to put out the fire, they were attacked, resulting in the death of nine whites and injury to eight others.

Militia units from Westchester and lower New York put down the insurrection. Seventy slaves and free blacks were jailed and 43 were put on trial. Eighteen were acquitted and 25 convicted, resulting in 20 being hanged and three burned at the stake.

This uprising resulted in the passage of even tougher slave codes by the New York State legislature, giving slave owners great leeway in meting out punishment to enslaved Africans.

Stop 6-Slave MarketIn the early 1700s, New York had one of the largest slave populations of any of England’s colonies. One out of every five New York residents was enslaved.

Slavery in New York differed from some of the colonies because there were no large plantations. Many of the enslaved Africans were skilled workers, carpenters, stone masons, fishermen, and boat builders.

Source: http://maap.columbia.edu/place/34.html

Slavery became the backbone of New York’s economic prosperity in the 1700s. To normalize this massive trade in human beings, in 1711, New York officials established a slave market on Wall Street. Slave auctions were held at Wall Street selling African slaves as property to traders wanting to buy them. Between 1700 and 1722, over 5,000 African slaves entered New York, most of whom came directly from Africa, while the rest from British colonies in the Caribbean and southern colonies

Source: http://spectrevision.net/2012/02/03/still-in-business/Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, as Phyllis Eckhaus points out, New York had “the largest urban slave population in mainland North America”. Therefore, New York was a crucial location in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which established it as the world’s financial capital. Many well-known companies and financial institutions benefitted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. They include Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan Chase, Wachovia Bank of North Carolina, Aetna Insurance, Bank of America, Citibank, and the Royal Bank of Scotland. Banks, such as Wachovia’s predecessors Bank of Charleston, South Carolina, and the Bank of North America, and J.P. Morgan Chase’s predecessor banks, made loans to slave owners and accepted slaves as “collateral”. When the slave owners defaulted on their loans, the banks became the new owners.

Moses Taylor (January 11, 1806 – May 23, 1882) was a 19th-century New York merchant and banker and one of the wealthiest men of that century. At his death, his estate was reported to be worth $70 million, or about $1.7 billion in today's dollars. He controlled the National City Bank of New York (later to become Citibank)

Bowling GreenBowling Green is New York City’s oldest park. According to tradition, this spot served as the council ground for Native American tribes and was the site of the legendary sale of Manhattan to Peter Minuit in 1626. From 1638 through 1647, it was a Dutch cattle market. In 1686 the site became public property. Bowling Green was first designated as a park in 1733, when it was offered for rent at the cost of one peppercorn per year. A gilded lead statue of King George III was erected here in 1770, and the iron fence was installed in 1771. On July 9, 1776, after the first public reading in New York State of the Declaration of Independence, this monument was toppled by angry citizens. By the late 18th century, Bowling Green marked the center of New York’s most fashionable

“Colonists tearing down the statue of King George III” by Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, 1859

residential area, surrounded by rows of Federal-style townhouses

Bowling Green NYC 1826, Source: http://nycdaytripper.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/bowling-green-1826.jpg

George Washington expressed his disapproval of this sort of mob action and his hope that in the future the

military would leave this kind of work "to the proper authorities."

The current site of the Museum of the American Indian is the former site of Fort Amsterdam and later the U.S. Customs House. Look up at the top of the former U.S. Customs House and you can see a Dutchman, Maarten

Harpertszoon Tromp.--

Street NamesThe current Street Names still reflect the activities

of New Amsterdam.

Maiden LaneA pathway that followed a course of a small stream, where young Dutch girls and women did their laundry.

Pearl StreetThe Dutch arriving on the Hudson River found one of the great oyster beds of the world, by some estimates containing half the world's supply. The Indians had long enjoyed the delicacy, piling great mounds of oyster shells along the Manhattan waterfront. And so the lane running along the shore eventually became known as Pearl Street. Landfill has since extended the island, but originally the shore ran from a jut of land below the fort known as Schuyler's Hook up the East River along today's Pearl.

Bridge StreetNamed for the bridge over the ditch flowing out of Blommaert's Vly, a bog lying about where the New York Stock Exchange sits today. The ditch was later widened into a canal running along Broad Street.

The BoweryThe English verison of “bouweriji,” Dutch for farm. It connected the farmland on what was then the outskirts of the City to the Wall Street area. Until 1807, it was known as Bowery Land. Peter Stuyvesant had a bouwerji there.

Canal Street Named for the cnala that was dug in the early 1800s to drain the Collect Pond into the Hudson River. The pond was drained and filled in by 1811, and Canal Street was built on top of the drainage system.

Originally, known in Dutch as “Maadge Paatje.”

Stone StreetStone Street took that name only in 1657 when it was the first street paved with stone blocks. Before then the people called it "Brouwer" Street for the breweries that lined it.

Beaver StreetBeaver Street's name honors New Amsterdam's first major export, whose trade was once centered on its blocks. Entrepreneurs like John Jacob Astor-the richest man in America-were so successful in providing beaver pelts for the hat industry that the animal was nearly wiped out in the state; they've been making a comeback, though, with one individual recently spotted in the Bronx River. Since 1975, the beaver has been the New York state animal, and is also featured on the city seal. The first openly recognized Synagogue in North America was also founded on this street in 1695.

Cortlandt, Roosevelt, and Livingston StreetsNamed for NY’s most prominent merchants, who held Sugar Houses on the streets that bare their names today.

Houston StreetNamed for William Houston, a delegate from Georgia to the Continental Congress who married into the wealth Bayard Family, a large land owning Dutch family.

Notes:Lower Manhattan’s street pattern was built to conform to the curving shoreline

Battery Park Battery Park is a 25 acre public park located at the Battery, the southern tip of Manhattan Island, facing New York Harbor. The Battery is named for artillery batteries that were positioned there in

Aerial view of Battery Park and Financial District in 2010

the city's early years to protect the settlement behind them.

The area was first visited by non-natives in 1609 by Henry Hudson. The first settlement was located three years in the area. The Dutch settlement there formed gradually grew into New Amsterdam

Castle Clinton, seen on the right, stands approximately two blocks west of where Fort Amsterdam stood almost 400 years

ago. The fort was torn down in 1790 and turned into a promenade. However, the need for new fortifications soon

became apparent and in 1798 guns were placed in temporary fortifications on the Battery. Eventually a new fort, Castle

Clinton would be built just before the War of 1812. Later, it also functioned as a beer garden, exhibition, hall theater,

public aquarium, and finally today as a national monument. November 25, 1783 marks the end of the Revolutionary War-the day the British left Manhattan and turned it over to the American forces. George Washington was on hand for this event. He would return years later to be sworn in as the first US President.

Seven years after losing Manhattan to the British and retreating upstate, General George Washington and Governor George Clinton reclaimed Fort Washington and then led the Continental Army in a triumphal march down Broadway to the Battery.

“Washington's entry into New York: on the evacuation of the city by the British, Nov. 25th. 1783” by Currier & Ives, c.1857