Fort Amsterdam
Fort Amsterdam was the administrative center and fortress of the Dutch West India Company on the island of Manhattan, now a district of New York.
Breakfast time
On May 4, 1626 met the new governor-general of the West India Company, Peter Minuit, with some settler families by ship from Holland coming to Manhattan and began construction of Fort Amsterdam. The fort should be both the seat of the West India Company for their colony of New Netherlands on the North American continent, as well as a military protection for the employees of the company, as well as sold by the Company to Manhattan and the surrounding settlers.
The first building on the proposed site as a fort on the southern tip of Manhattan was a log house surrounded by a picket fence.
In October 1628 a ship Amsterdam reached with the message that the Fort Amsterdam was completed with four bastions and outer walls of stone.
1629 of the West India Company with a certificate decided not only trade with the colony to operate, but to actually bring settlers to the colony for the development of the colony. In this point XXXI deed dated June 7, 1629, the company promises " the fort on the island of Manhattan " complete and to enable as soon as possible in readiness for defense. The 1628 reported as completed Fort might have been just a simple construction of a total population of 270 Europeans on Manhattan. On August 13, 1630, the said certificate of the West India Company in Fort Amsterdam was announced, but a settlement of the colony on a larger scale did not take place and further construction of the Fort are to be considered in the coming decades as minor.
Fort in the city
As an additional protection for the around the Fort grown into a small town New Amsterdam, with approximately 2000 inhabitants in 1652 was a few hundred meters north of the fort, a rampart with a wooden palisade on it - the south end of Manhattan Island finally - built. Today, along the former Walls runs Wall Street.
On August 26, 1664 came a British squadron before New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the city. Without struggle, the city was finally passed. On September 8, 1664 Dutch garrison troops left the fort and embarks to Holland. The fort was renamed by the British at Fort James.
During the turmoil in the years 1688/89 in England, during which the Dutchman William III. was of Orange King of England, Jacob Leisler made in 1689 as head of the City of New York as New Amsterdam is called with his Fort Amsterdam since the renaming by the British in 1664. The German Leisler had come in 1660 as a Dutch officer in Fort Amsterdam. In January 1691 British troops landed in New York, against which Leisler six weeks entrenched in the fort, until he gave up.
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The fort was demolished in 1787 for construction of the Gouvernment House, the new headquarters of New York's mayor. The Gouvernment House served in 1815 as a customs house for the Port of New York. After the demolition of the House Gouvernment the new customs building was completed in 1907 on the former site of Fort Amsterdam and now serves as a museum.