THE NEW AMSTERDAM HISTORY CENTER CELEBRATES 20 YEARS
The New Amsterdam History Center (NAHC) was born in 2005. In observance of our 20th anniversary this year, NAHC has compiled observations from original trustees, donors, and others on their memories of how NAHC got started two decades ago, and also, from more recent trustees, the highlights of our efforts to promote the story of the Dutch presence in New York City in the 17th century through our programs. These comments are gathered in this special edition of our newsletter, New Amsterdam Yesterday and Today, and we offer them to you, our readers and supporters, of NAHC yesterday and today. Enjoy!
Firth Fabend, longtime NAHC Trustee and editor of “New Amsterdam Yesterday and Today”
For me and for many, those first five years are a blur of idealistic, enthusiastic, even passionate like-minded friends and acquaintances trying to find their way in a bewildering world of websites and choices (what’s a website?). We had high hopes and, of course, many punctured dreams. We agonized over finding a home base . . . but the deep dark cloud of financial matters hovered.
Casey Kemper, NAHC’s Second President
In my interview with Casey Kemper, the second president of the New Amsterdam History Center, he spoke of how the idea of an organization solely based on the history of New Amsterdam was born, and how central to its initial creation were the Collegiate Church Corporation and the Holland Society of New York:
Both organizations were vitally interested in telling a story that had never been properly told. Both provided seed money and infrastructure to get it started, and both stayed with it for the crucial first decade and more.
Casey remembers key people of those days: James Van Wagoner, a busy executive at Ernst & Young, who not only took time to serve as NAHC’s first president but also stayed on for several terms, until we were on a firm-ish footing. He also remembers Ken Chase, our valiant secretary for years, Chris Moore, our link with the African-American past, and former trustee Rett Zabriskie.
Kenneth Chase was an integral founding member of the Center from its beginning. Along with other members of the Collegiate Church, he was critical in founding the Center as an effort to promote the 400 th anniversary of the founding of New Amsterdam. From that time forward, Ken was a moving force in the growth of the Center, a longtime member of the Board until his recent retirement. He thoroughly enjoyed attending the Center’s many programs. Ken remembers his time with the Center with great joy and pride and looks forward to its next twenty years.
Rett Zabriskie, former NAHC Trustee
Rett generously shared his memories of how things began: it was probably Russell Shorto who deserves the most credit for the observation that Dutch New Amsterdam contained the beginnings of everything that New York City is today . Others have hinted at it over the years, but Shorto’s “Island at the Center of the World” made it real for many. The NAHC story can be seen as a prime and effective instrument for making that observation available to continually new audiences.
Rett continued, describing how, twenty years ago, several groups came together to wonder over how to observe the 400th anniversary of the voyage of de Halve Maen up the river that now bears Henry Hudson’s name.
The Holland Society, The Huguenot Society of America, the Collegiate Church of the City of New York, the New Netherland Institute, all recognized the need to highlight 1609. As the conversations among them progressed, the notion of an actual, physical center, located in the historic Corbin building, right next to the Fulton St. Transit Center, began to form. The Collegiate Church owned the Corbin Building and was willing to provide some space in it. Others were willing to provide materials and work for financial support to make it real. And out of that dream, the New Amsterdam History Center was born.
In January 2005, Dr. Richard Rabinowitz and Dr. Jan Ramirez presented a concept paper, outlining the public value, institutional character, and key audiences for such a center, along with some program possibilities. [See Jan’s account of this valuable endeavor below.] By December 2005, NAHC had submitted an application to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation for a grant to fund the project. In the meantime, an ad hoc series of programs on historical themes began. Esme Berg, who joined the board in 2007, was the spark plug for this and was active in staffing NAHC events as well as promoting lectures and educational visits by other historical organizations. [More from and about Esme below.]
And then the Metropolitan Transit Authority bomb exploded: the Corbin Building was to be appropriated by eminent domain for use within the complex being developed as the Fulton Street Transit Center–now the Oculus. With that, the NAHC mission and vision, and perhaps reason for being, was significantly threatened.
The NAHC reaction to the MTA’s action was quintessentially a New York City reaction. On the one hand, legal action was initiated to try and change the MTA’s action and brainstorming of alternative plans began. The legal action produced no results, but the brainstorming resulted in a December 2007 grant from the Empire State Development Corporation for $300,000 to develop a Virtual New Amsterdam Project.
These beginnings led to the NAHC we have today, an organization providing both online and in-person experiences of New Amsterdam for today’s New Yorkers and visitors. The “Mapping Early New York” project online provides insight world-wide into the daily life of mid-17th-century New Amsterdam from overarching historical themes even down to counting cows in a 1660 pasture off Broadway on the 3-D model. NAHC programs and events continues to provide insight into 17th-century thinking and acting that both formed our modern life and continues to create new history. [See Toya Dubin’s account of “Mappings” beginnings here.]
Over the years, among many excellent offerings, two program events stand out for me. In 2018 Daniel Noorlander and Noah Gelfand presented an evening on religious tolerance in New Netherland. The throwaway line for years has been that the Dutch were tolerant and welcoming – of women in all positions of life, of strangers, and of religions other than Dutch Reformed Christianity, whereas when the English took over, they were unwelcoming of all and suppressive of religion beyond the Anglican Church. As the briefest second thought will suggest, the reality was somewhat more nuanced and complex. The evening was a helpful corrective on many levels. The second event that is vivid in my memory was a 2020 presentation by Shaun Sayers on trade and how it morphs in response to the society in which it functions. As is well known, the New Netherland colony began to make money on the then current fad of using beaver pelts for hats and other fashion articles. Sayers spent an evening showing how the major money-making activity became the sale of weapons and especially gunpowder to the Native American tribes.
Human beings of all ages, not just our own, feel that life moves too fast to grasp, that events overtake and disrupt the ‘best of all possible worlds’ that we have built. Voltaire challenged that and provided a necessary perspective and balance with the publication of Candide in 1759. Today, knowledge, perspective, and balance regarding the history that has formed us is shared with many by the New Amsterdam History Center. May the 20 years of this gift be cherished, supported, and continue for many more years to come.
May it be so, Rett.
Stephen R. Rinaldi recent addition to NAHC’s Board
In this spirit, one of our newest trustees, Stephen R. Rolandi, MPA, offers his thoughts on “The Value of History.”
“Why Does New Amsterdam History Matter? Because History Matters” [maybe?]
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
George A.N. Santayana (1863-1952)
I am often reminded of this quotation attributed to the Spanish/U.S. philosopher George Santayana whenever I am asked about the value of history. Here, I dive in to explain history’s relevance.
History is part of the family of social sciences, which includes law, economics, sociology, government, and public administration. History tries to teach us about certain things:
- Why do some societies succeed and others fail?
- Why do nations go to war?
- How and why do people change society for better or for worse?
- Can history help policy makers and government leaders make better decisions?
The broader questions to ask ourselves are these: What is the point of studying history? How do we know about the past? Does an objective historical truth exist? And what lessons can we—and future generations—learn from historical events?
When I was an undergraduate at New York University, I read Edward Hallett Carr’s What Is History? Edward Hallett Carr (1892–1982), who in addition to being a historian and journalist, served as a diplomat and delegate from the United Kingdom to the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference following the end of World War I. Carr’s basic approach to history was from the perspective of someone who had lived through the major events of the 20th century (World Wars I and II; the Great Depression; the Holocaust; and the Cold War).
Carr saw history as a continuous dialogue between the past and present. He believed that historians are influenced by the society that surrounds them. He thought that history was more of a science than an art; and it is history that contributes to the contemporary understanding not only of a nation’s experiences, but also politics and relationships among nations and peoples.
My career has been in the field of public administration—as a government practitioner, higher education administrator, and now as a professor of public policy. History provides valuable materials and tools for those who study public administration, as it is the working laboratory of human experience.
To study a nation’s administrative systems, according to Leonard D. White (author of The Federalists and The Jeffersonians), would be incomplete without examining a nation’s historical experiences.
History provides valuable contributions in the area of decision-making. The classic study of decision-making in a crisis situation is, and remains today, Graham T. Allison’s work Essence of Decision, which analyzed the decision-making process followed by President John F. Kennedy during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the United States and the Soviet Union came perilously close to a nuclear confrontation.
Dean Allison’s work, as well as Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May’s Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers, illustrate how one can use the ideas and lessons learned from history to interpret current problems and situations, and make more effective decisions.
Thus, I like to think that the history of New Amsterdam provides enduring material for current and future generations to apply to their problems—and the resolution of them.
Tom Visée, past President
From the Netherlands, Trustee and Immediate Past President Tom Visée contributed his “musings” to our growing compendium.
“This year marks the tenth anniversary of my involvement with the New Amsterdam History Center,” he remembers. He recalls that, shortly after moving to New York in 2014 and subsequently reading Russell Shorto’s Island at the Center of the World, his feelings as a Dutchman connected to the history of his new hometown were vivid. He got talking to the Executive Director, Esme Berg, he recalls, and swiftly volunteered his spare hours to manage the organization’s social media. In 2017, he was invited to join the Board of Trustees, which he gladly did.
As a transportation planner, “you might think I felt out of place surrounded by all these academic scholars, but I did not, as we shared a fascination for 17th-century Dutch New York. In fact, I was elected president in 2020, shepherding NAHC through the pandemic. Before heading back home after nearly nine years in the Big Apple, my family and I said farewell to the U.S. with a seven-week coast-to-coast road trip by RV. On the way I was reading Firth Haring Fabend’s book New Netherland in a Nutshell, so that New Amsterdam was never far away. I am still a trustee, representing NAHC, but based in the Netherlands.”
Our board contains many historians, Tom went on, “but we have slowly been branching out to accommodate more diverse backgrounds, while keeping a focus on the history of New Amsterdam as we continue to curate our programming. As part of this expanding skillset we welcome new trustees, especially those with a strong background in finance, marketing, or fundraising. Do you feel connected to our mission of spreading the love for New Amsterdam, and are you willing and able to invest a few hours per week in our shared goal? If so, please reach out to Esme Berg at events@newamsterdamhistorycenter.org.
I hope to welcome you on the Board of Trustees soon!
We echo your welcome, Tom!
Esme Berg
Firth remembers that when, after five years, we had finally put to rest the matter of a physical center [i.e., we couldn’t afford it], we moved on. In the second five years we actually found our center, and it was, we realized, where WE were. And where Esme Berg, our Executive Director, was. Without Esme to hold it all together, the center would have dispersed in a hundred directions and vanished. Today, Esme recalls how with the help of Toya Dubin and Dennis Maika, we found designers to create our first website, which we launched in 2012 with a cocktail party and a lot of fanfare. We were getting on our way, and Esme was our guide and our preceptor. It had finally dawned on us that we were going to focus on programs! And we were going to put them online via our website to share with the world!
Patricia Bonomi, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, N.Y.U.
Besides Esme, at this time, two historians joined the Board, Pat Bonomi and Firth Fabend, author and also an NYU Ph.D. They brought discipline to the initial burbling enthusiasm, insisting that in our programming we concentrate on New Amsterdam, and not all things Dutch, which was a temptation all too ready at hand. In the fifteen years of programming since then, NAHC has held to that strict guideline, departing only a few times from it. As a result, the last decade, from 2015 until today in 2025, is marked by a veritable treasure house of New Amsterdam History Center programs, some of which stand out in particular.
Rett Zabriskie remembers two programs fondly: Over the years, among many excellent offerings, two program events stand out for me. In 2018 Daniel Noorlander and Noah Gelfand presented an evening on religious tolerance in New Netherland. The throwaway line for years has been that the Dutch were tolerant and welcoming – of women in all positions of life, of strangers, and of religions other than Dutch Reformed Christianity, whereas when the English took over, they were unwelcoming of all and suppressive of religion beyond the Anglican Church. As the briefest second thought will suggest, the reality was somewhat more nuanced and complex. The evening was a helpful corrective on many levels. The second event that is vivid in my memory was a 2020 presentation by Shaun Sayers on trade and how it morphs in response to the society in which it functions. As is well known, the New Netherland colony began to make money on the then current fad of using beaver pelts for hats and other fashion articles. Sayers spent an evening showing how the major money-making activity became the sale of weapons and especially gunpowder to the Native American tribes.
Pat Bonomi recalls a program with Charles Gehring and Jaap Jacobs in conversation. She found this to be of NAHC’s most interesting programs, especially the part concerning the intermarriages, or partnerships, that formed between white settlers and the Indigenous people of New Netherland.
Another was “Slave Life in New Netherland,” which Pat organized and moderated; it was in-person (with at least 150 attendees), held at Baruch College CUNY. The participants were Professors Susanah Shaw Romney and David Blight, and Christopher Moore, senior researcher at the Schomburg Library in Harlem (and a NAHC Trustee). They were focused almost exclusively on New Amsterdam, and covered both slave and free Blacks, as well as family and religious life. A fascinating aspect was that Chris Moore (now sadly deceased) was a direct descendent of a New Amsterdam resident in the De Vries family. Chris was also an early advocate for the African Burial Ground downtown.
As for NAHC programs in the more recent period, and focused especially on New Amsterdam, Pat mentioned three. “Trash Talk, a sort of anthropological look at how New Amsterdam dealt with refuse and recycling. Ross Perlin tackling the old question, “Is it true that 18 languages were spoken in New Amsterdam?” His reply: even more than 18, if we count Native and African languages. Which of course, we should. And The Little Ice Age, an unexpected topic and fascinating.
Thanks for the memories, Rett and Pat!
Jan Seidler Ramirez, NAHC Trustee
And finally, from sweltering New York in June 2025, Jan Seidler Ramirez has described how she remembers the beginnings of our now 20-year-old New Amsterdam History Center.
NAHC at 20: Reflections
In 2005, I entered into a relationship with the New Amsterdam History Center (NAHC) neither through the front door of the Dutch Collegiate Church, which had offered hosting services to the fledgling organization, nor through personal Dutch immigrant ancestry, nor any scholarship focused on the formative era of New Amsterdam and New Netherland. Rather, I arrived through a side-door, as a consultant with the Brooklyn-based American History Workshop, which had been retained to help “ideate” possibilities for this venture.
Many of those early discussions focused on NAHC’s intended format. Would it occupy an actual piece of real estate in lower Manhattan, serving as an informative exhibition venue for sightseers looking for traces of the City’s urban beginnings? Might it recreate a 3-dimensional, ambulatory Castello Plan map experience, of the sort that had intrigued several generations of schoolchildren and visitors to the Museum of the City of New York uptown? Should this “Center” hold or borrow authentic artifacts, maps and other 17th-century realia? If so, what additional facility requirements would be involved for security, climate control, design accessibility and staffing infrastructure? Would an adjunct café featuring Dutch-associated food and beer entice local traffic beyond history buffs and tourists, generating revenue to offset operating costs?
These were some of the concepts floated for a location-anchored NAHC downtown. Briefly, the Corbin building on Broadway at John Street – on a land lot then owned by the Dutch Collegiate Church Corporation — surfaced as a potential anchor for this enterprise. However, that possibility folded as plans escalated for restoring New York’s wounded Financial District in the aftermath of 9/11. (At risk of demolition but then saved, the Corbin Building would be integrated into the new Fulton Street Transit Center project.) Soon thereafter, the 2008 global Financial Crisis erupted, curtailing many growth ambitions – including the prospect of investing in a downtown address for NAHC. Brief consideration was given to situating this physical project elsewhere, but logic prevailed: if visitors on foot represented the necessary fuel to run a viable “center-to-be,” it seemed unlikely they would seek encounters with, and vestiges of New Amsterdam in midtown Manhattan or the Upper West Side.
For NAHC, that road not taken opened other doors, which have proven more sustainable and promising. First, the 1660 Castello Plan attraction converted into a scalable, interactive, ever-more fascinating web-supported exploration of New Amsterdam. Today, https://www.newamsterdamhistorycenter.org/vnap/ is one of the organization’s signature virtual learning experiences. Second, events and talks hosted by NAHC burst from the corset of a repeat destination venue, freeing the organization to issue a round-robin of presenting sites, often in partnership with like-minded history organizations, clubs, and facilities with extant lecture and chamber music spaces. The Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in New York took note, and has provided numerous grants to support those offerings over the years. The diverse palette of these co-host settings has enlivened and broadened NACH’s mobile identity.
The advent of the Covid-19 pandemic troubled and challenged all of us, including NAHC’s immediate operations. That said, restrictions on travel and togetherness would motivate the technological pivot to producing on-line programs. This necessary reconceptualizing grew broader awareness of, and audiences for, NAHC’s deepening content portfolio, removing geographical attendance as a sampling requirement. As the pandemic receded, live events organized by NAHC were reintroduced, to the delight of sociable partakers always ready to experience a new locale or program de-brief with others. However, webcast talks with expert scholars and history practitioners, and other internet-enabled conversations, have carried over as mainstay offerings. These, too, continue to attract both returning and new registrants.
Many years back my short-term consulting association with NAHC expired when I resumed my core occupation as a full-time museum curator. Nonetheless, I opted to remain involved as a NAHC board member, impressed by this small non-profit’s big vision and formidable educational reach. If I have made any contribution to this venture, it has been in the role of a history-oriented New Yorker intrigued by the superscale impact of this once peripheral colonial venture on the world-power megalopolis that New York City became. That curiosity has been channeled through participation in NACH’s program committee, which benefits from the hard-muscle intellect of fellow committee members, many of whom are recognized authorities, veteran archivists and adept researchers of the New Amsterdam period. Together, the committee imports its fund of ideas and impressive knowledge networks to construct NAHC’s annual calendar of public programs and events. The recruited presenters represent wide-ranging expertise, interpretive practices and career points as shared investigators of New Amsterdam’s uneasy European settlement — and the impacts soon unsettling its indigenous people. Over the past few years, guest program moderators have been invited to help unpack this trending scholarship for more generalist audience members. One standout interlocutor has been Manhattan Borough Historian Rob Snyder, a professor emeritus of Journalism and American Studies at Rutgers University.
Having attained its twenty-year milestone, the New Amsterdam History Center has, in my judgment, consistently boxed above its weight class. The “Mapping Early New York” project combined with its cornucopia of engaging public programs are remarkable, hard-won achievements. This has been the handiwork of its generous, steadfast board members, talented primary consultants, and the indispensable NAHC trustee Esme Berg, who pilots the organization’s week to week operations as part-time Executive Director and overtime rainmaker.
Change is inevitable with the narrowing and retirement of the non-profit’s founding generation. Newcomers to the board and organization’s patron program are vital to enable NAHC to maintain its collaborative lifeblood and quality of thought-provoking offerings. If the fifty or so formal years of New Amsterdam/ New Netherland hold ongoing relevance for us in the 21st century (yes, a rhetorical statement), NAHC deserves to thrive in its role of nimble archeologist — unwrapping and revealing that tenacious, complex legacy.
Thank you, Jan, for this comprehensive and thoughtful round-up!
.
Comments from Our Community
New Netherland Slave Trade, Nov 2023: “First, thank you for sending me your link to the Slave Ship program. It was one of the finest Zoom programs I’ve attended, and that’s a high bar. Meticulous research, superb organization, articulately moderated and presented by all participants.It opened my eyes to ways of sharing NAHC programs with new audiences and forming new partnerships with educational and cultural institutions in New York City and beyond.”
– Suzanne Stevens
Vrooman Letters – June 2023: “We enjoyed the Zoom lecture about the Vrooman letters. We live in North Carolina. A couple years ago, I found a missing piece of my husband’s family. He knew almost nothing about his maternal grandfather whose last name was Bull, obviously British. But we learned that his mother was a Vrooman. In light of the long-standing enmity, now it’s humorous, and probably not uncommon that a man with British heritage married a woman of Dutch heritage. This opened up a whole new perspective of his family. ”
– Heather & Mark Minion
Mapping Presentation – Jan 28, 2022: It was an excellent program – everyone loved it. Thank you!
” – Robert Kelleman
Vrooman Again: I so very much enjoyed this. I truly appreciate the efforts underway in further understanding this early history of New Amsterdam. I am an immigrant from Nederland and listened with great interest in this Leiden connection since that is where I was born.
” – Adriana van Breda
Women’s Program – March 2023: What a wonderful program! We had 357 individuals tuning in, and around 39 questions asked in the chat!
We even received an email already praising the program:
“Dear Valerie Paley et al.,
This program was wonderfully interesting. I enjoyed every minute of it. These two women studying their foremothers are learned and eloquent and they seem so obviously to enjoy what they were talking about. Their scholarship struck me as exemplary. What a joy it must be to have them as teachers.
” – Keith A. Palka
Gesina ter Borch – Dec 2024: “Dear Vanessa, Esme & all, Thank you so much for organizing such an exciting event last night. It was truly inspiring, and a great example of highlighting Dutch history and art in New York. Kind regards
– Sietze
Trash Talk – Feb 2024: Congratulations and thanks on assembling a wonderful program on “Trash Talk”! We are of course proud of Mike Lucas’s presentation but also much enjoyed Dr. Nagel’s talk as well! This is a wonderful addition to all your other archived presentations.
– Dr. Jonathan Lothrop, Anthropology Supervisor, Curator of Archaeology, New York State Museum
Trash Talk (follow-up): I attended the webinar last evening and want to thank you for one of the best I’ve had the pleasure of listening to. It was great to learn more about this topic and to see the interplay between the moderator and speakers. The respect and repartee shown AMONG them were a pleasure to witness! ”
– Christopher Van Note
Epilogue
There is much more from the past to report, and we hope and trust, much more to come. In concluding this brief reprise of our first twenty years, we especially hope and trust you, our readers and doers, will be with us as we sail forth into the second twenty on the ample wings of history!
