New Amsterdam (Lower Manhattan)
The Dutch fur-trading town that became New York — its northern edge is the street we now call Wall Street.
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Founded around Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan's southern tip, it earned municipal rights on February 2, 1653. In 1664 the English seized it and renamed it after the Duke of York. You're standing where New York City began.
What to look for
- Wall Street — its name traces the wall that once marked the town's northern city limit
- Manhattan's southern tip, site of Fort Amsterdam, built to defend the West India Company's fur trade
- The Hudson River, which Henry Hudson called the Mauritius after his 1609 voyage on the Halve Maen
Everything sits within today's Lower Manhattan, south of Wall Street — a compact patch you can cover on foot.
New Amsterdam (Lower Manhattan) is one of 38 sights worth the detour in New York, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the New York pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in New York
- Statue of LibertyFrance's gift to the U.S.: a crowned, robed woman raising a torch over New York Harbor, long read as a welcome to immigrants arriving by sea.
- Empire State BuildingRide up to the 86th- or 102nd-floor deck and look straight down on Midtown Manhattan.
- World Trade Center & 9/11 MemorialTwo reflecting pools now sit in the exact footprints where the Twin Towers stood until September 11, 2001.
- Wall StreetUnder 2,000 feet of pavement that stands in for all of American finance — named for a wall that hasn't existed since 1699.
- The Met (Metropolitan Museum of Art)1.5 million works under one roof, from Sumerian stone to modern American rooms — a day here barely scratches it.
- Central ParkThe most visited urban park in the US — an estimated 42 million visits a year — built by hand on the razed land of a Black settlement, Seneca Village.