Dave Hughes. Imagine, Oct 2011
Timeline
The maps in historical order
After a billion or so years of tectonic upheaval and a few Pleistocene glaciers the landscape of New York is created. Later generations would radically alter this landscape.1
The Algonquian-speaking Lenape settle on the island they call “Mannahatta” some 6500 years ago. They live by hunting, fishing and small-scale farming in an ecosystem “as complex as Yellowstone.”
- 1609/2009 – The Mannahatta Map
Giovanni Verrazzano (1524) and Henry Hudson (1609) become the first Europeans to explore the region. Based on Hudson’s expeditions the Dutch, via the West India Company, establish the colony of New Netherland and the settlement of New Amsterdam.
- 1529 – The Verrazzano World Map
- 1610 – The Velasco Map
- 1614 – The Block Figurative Map
- 1638/1665 – The Manatus Map
- 1661/1665 – The Castillo Plan
In 1664 James II, the Duke of York, sends a flotilla into New York Harbor to capture the colony. He succeeds and Dutch New Amsterdam becomes English New York.
- 1661/1664 – The Duke’s Plan
- 1695 – The Miller Plan
- 1731 – The Bradford Map
- 1755 – The Maerschalck Map
1. For a general history of New York City here are a few titles:
Burrows, Edwin and Wallace, Mike. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998 (WorldCat).
Jackson, Kenneth (ed). The Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010 (WorldCat).