Tours Details
Date: TBD
Start time: 2pm EST
Duration: 2 hour (~35min walking)
Meeting Point: Wall St. and Broadway
Participants limit: 10
New Amsterdam 400 Years Architecture Tour
New Amsterdam was founded in 1625 as a trading and resupply post for The Netherland’s West India Trading Company. The British took control of New Amsterdam in 1664 and changed its name to New York City. It became a key city in England’s expansionist colonization of North America.
The Dutch culture of commerce and trade is embedded in the core of NYC’s purpose and history. Dutch physical presence is captured in the physical form of the city and on the seal of the city. We will walk the circumference of New Amsterdam as it existed in 1664. The walk highlights the contrast between an urban form developed as the Netherlands began its transition from its late Medieval phase into the Renaissance and the 1811 NYC Commissioners’ City Plan, the City’s famous street grid, a Jeffersonian-period Enlightenment town plan. The downtown core is rich in the City’s historic development of buildings, national political history and the evolution of a capitalist economy centered on Wall Street.
NYC’s downtown urban morphology demonstrates a medieval town plan based on merging natural topography, requirements for commerce and self-preservation. New Amsterdam, settled as a “company town” for the Dutch West India Trading Company, overcame a slow start to flourish as a trading and “re-fueling” port as part of the Dutch Atlantic Ocean mercantile trade triangle in contrast to the land-grant, colonizing plantations up the North (Hudson) River created to secure a strong Dutch land presence in the New World. From this small village grew the world’s financial center housed in a new building type—High Rise Commercial construction.
Some of the Places Featured on this Tour
Wall Street & Broadway, Trinity Episcopal Church
1 Wall Street (Bank of NY; Irving Trust)
Wall Street Subway Station
1 Broadway (International Merchant Marine Co.)
8 Broad Street (NY Stock Exchange)
1 Bowling Green (Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House)
54 Peal Street (Fraunces Tavern)
Stone Street Historic District
1 Hanover Square (India House)
40 Wall Street (Bank of Manhattan Co HQ, Trump Bldg.)
28 Wall Street (Federal Hall National Memorial)
Languages
Public tours are in English. Private tours are available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Bulgarian and Catalan.
Trinity Church
Your Architect Guide
William M. Singer, AIA, LEED AP BD + C, NCARB
William M. Singer, AIA, LEED AP BD + C, NCARB, is currently a discerning Code and Zoning Specialist for the NYC Department of Buildings. With a long and rich background in designing and constructing major public facilities—including courthouses, schools, transportation hubs, and cultural landmarks—William brings a wealth of knowledge to our tour. His impressive resume includes being a partner at Gruzen Samton Architects, a leading NYC architecture and planning firm, a Senior Fulbright Scholar in Slovenija, with graduate degrees in both Architecture and English. For the exceptional renovation and modernization of El Museo Del Barrio, he was honored with a City of New York Arts Commission Excellence in Design award (2004), a NYS AIA Merit Design Award for Adaptive Reuse (2011) and a Municipal Arts Society Master Works Award for Community Catalyst (2012).
William blends his passion for architecture, urbanism and history into a love of teaching—sharing information and knowledge. His 13 years of teaching in NYU’s Graduate Program for Real Estate Development, where he created and honed his cycle of walking tours, merge with 10 years of providing tours to One To World, the official Fulbright Programming organization in the NYC Metro area, enhances his knowledge of NYC through active engagement with tour colleagues—questions and discourse about NYC significantly sharpen the focus of observing the city. The way to know a city is through one’s feet.
Experience New York with our PhD Architect-led Tours
Our public tours are 2 hours of transformational experiences that connect people with the city on a deeper level. We focus on 8 areas according to the location, neighborhood and their distinct character - weaving culture, history, architecture, art and design in an engaging, story-telling manner to uncover some of the city’s hidden gems and best-kept secrets.
