A  HISTORICAL  TOUR OF  THE  GREATEST  STREET IN THE WORLD.......BROADWAY

                     THE  DUTCH  HEERE  STRAAT
                        Prior  to  1911

      Between the Bowling Green and Vesey Street, Broadway has been called
at various times in old documents De Heere Wagh Wegh, the Broad Wagon Way,
the Common Highway, and the Great Public Road.
      A number of colonists, provided with tools, cattle, and other
requisites, were sent out in several vessels and settled near the site of
Albany in the first half of May, 1624. It was not until the spring of 1626
that a permanent, agricultural colony under Director Peter Minuits was
established upon Manhattan Island; though it must not be forgotten that the
island had been occupied as a trading post for several years before this.
      The West India Company built a fort at the lower end of the island,
and about this clustered the houses of the first settlers; these were rude
affairs of bark. Later, there was expansion along the shore of the East
River as the settlers began to cultivate their bouweries, or farms. When
Director-General Kieft massacred Indians at Pavonia and on Long Island and
brought about the Indian wars of 1641, and later, the people were obliged to
flee from the outlying farms to the protection of the fort in order to
escape death or bondage at the hands of the redskins. As it was, their
cattle were killed, and their houses destroyed while many of the men were
tomahawked, and the women and children carried into captivity.
      There was at first no order in which the houses were built. Each
settler "squatted" wherever he pleased, his one desire being to get as close
to the fort as possible. He built his house and cultivated his garden; and
after a period of occupancy, usually six years, received from the Company
the grond brief, or patent, for his land. It was not until 1642 that any
grants were made of town lots; and it was not until the following  year that
such grants were made on the Heere Straat. These were principally on the
east side, as the west side, was taken up with the burying-ground (Morris
Street), the garden, and the orchard of the Company, the Company's Bouwerie,
and the country places of Vandergrift and Van Dyke. In 1631, a windmill for
the use of the town was erected on the Heere Straat between the present
Liberty and Cortlandt streets.

1.  IRREGULARITY  OF  STREETS

      On account of this "squatting" of the first settlers, there grew up
that irregularity of streets which distinguishes to-day the lower parts of
the city of New York. Streets were unknown in those early days; but about
the time of the first grants two streets leading from the fort seem to have
formed themselves by common consent; one, the Heere Straat, which followed a
ridge of land northward through the Company's farms and fields, the other, a
street leading along the shore of the East River, which became the Great
Queen Street of the English and  the Pearl Street of the present. It was
along this latter street that the settlement grew away from the fort, having
its greatest density of houses and population in Blommaert's Vly, through
which flowed a sluggish stream that drained the swamp near the Heere Straat.
As early as 1638, it appears that measures were taken to drain this marsh,
but it was not until 1643 that an artificial ditch was constructed to carry
off the swamp water. At first, a roadway twenty-five or thirty feet wide was
left on the west side only; but in 1657-59, arrangements were made with the
landholders on the eastern side, and a similar width of roadway was secured
on that side also. At the same time, the ditch was deepened and widened and
its sides sheathed with planks, so that it became a canal through which the
tide ebbed and flowed almost to Beaver Street. Here were conditions and
surroundings with which the dutchman was familiar; he was reminded of home,
and this section became the most desirable and thickly settled on the
island.  The street was called De Heere Graft; in English days and our own,
Broad Street. By 1676 the ditch had become so unsanitary that Governor
Andros ordered that the street be filled up, and the ditch became a covered
sewer as far  south as the bridge (Bridge Street).

2.  THE  PALISADE  (or Wall)

      From the very beginning of the Dutch occupation, differences arose
between them and the English as to the ownership of the land.  In 1654, some
English from Connecticut, probably in furtherance of that colony's claim to
all the land as far as the ocean, settled on Westchester Creek, in what is
now the Borough of the Bronx. Director Stuyvesant, and his council, fearing
further encroachments by the English upon the land of New Netherland, and
even upon New Amsterdam itself, sent an expedition to arrest the audacious
intruders, and also during the same year, caused a palisade to be built from
the East River to the Hudson. This palisade, or wall, was regularly
patrolled by the soldiers of the Company, and several falcons were
distributed along its length. Two gates gave egress and ingress; one being
located at the upper end of the Heere Straat, called De Landt Poorte, or
land gate; the other, the more important of the two, called the water gate,
at the shore of the East River. The land gate was opposite where Trinity
Church now stands and gave access to the Vlacte, or pasture; the water gate
gave access to the ferry to Brooklyn, to Allerton's warehouse, and to the
other houses along the river road.
      This palisade, or wall, gave its name to the street which was
afterwards laid out along its length and which has become the financial
centre of New York___ Wall Street. The wall was, therefore, the upper limit
of the town of New Amsterdam. If we measure the extent of the town from
north to south by the scale on the " Duke's Plan" of 1664, we shall find
that it did not exceed five hundred and fifty yards from the southern
extremity to the wall. The palisade was allowed to decay, but was repaired
from time to time as the danger of invasion arose during both Dutch and
English days. The wall was finally demolished in 1699. When the workmen were
digging up Broadway in 1799 to lay the water pipes of the Manhattan Company,
they came upon the foundations and posts of the old city gate at Wall
Street.

3.  OTHER INFORMATION

      Outside the city gate, the Heere Straat did not extend as far as
Fulton Street. This section had been granted in 1644 to Jan Jansen Damen,
Whose property extended, with some slight variations, from river to river,
and was now rented by his heirs to five tenants.
      On the east side of the street, was a grant taken in 1643 by Govert
Loockermans and Isaac Allerton, an Englishman who had come over in the
Mayflower to Plymouth. The property extended one hundred feet above Beaver
Street on the Heere Straat, and two hundred and fifty feet back to the swamp
on Broad Street. Above this, was another farm of Jan Jansen Damen, which had
been used formerly by the negro slaves of the Company to cultivate for their
own use.  Damen Cultivated part of it, and used part of it for a sheep
pasture. The next property was that belonging to Secretary Cornelis Van
Tienhoven, which he had acquired in 1644. The few houses on the east side of
the road were of a mean character, little better than hovels, with one room
and a fireplace, being occupied by mechanics and laborers. This was due to
the fact that the Heere Straat was remote from the business parts of the
town.


Source:  The Greatest Street in the World 
(The story of Broadway, old and New, from the Bowling Green to Albany)
Author:  Stephen Jenkins
Publisher:  G.P. Putnam's Sons-New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
Copyright: 1911
_________________________________________________

   Researched, Prepared and Transcribed by Miriam Medina
Broadway
The Fort and the Bowling Green
Broadway to Wall Street
Commons..or the Fields
				

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