A Long History of a Short Block: Four Centuries of Development Surprises on a Single NYC Block

[Recursion]

http://www.greenestreet.nyc/paper

This is really fascinating. The researchers trace the history of Greene Street between Houston and Prince on the north edge of SoHo from 1640 to the present day.

The earliest records we have for the block are for the 1640s, during the era of the Dutch colony New Amsterdam. The Dutch had brought slaves from Africa to New Amsterdam as early as 1626. From 1641 to 1647, the Dutch authorities gave parcels of 6 to 12 acres on our block and surrounding area to four slaves, Gratia D’Angola, Pieter Van Campen, Marycke, and Anthony Portuguese. The borders of the four parcels straddled our block. These slaves then became “half-free” – meaning that they were free, but their children would remain slaves.

The gift was not quite as magnanimous as it appears, as the Dutch were at war with the Indians at the time and the blacks formed a buffer against the Indians. They produced food for the city during the war by paying a tax of grain and livestock. Giving this land to slaves also reflected the low value of the land at the time, which reflected the low population of the city (only 450 in 1644).

It also partially reflected the low expectations the Dutch had for New Amsterdam. During the treaty negotiations with the British after the war that resulted in permanent transfer of the colony, the Dutch at one point addressed the question of whether to retain Dutch Guiana (what is today Suriname) or New Amsterdam, and chose the more promising sugar-producing slave plantations of Dutch Guiana.

Surprise 1: Dutch expect New York to be less valuable than Suriname. The Dutch did not anticipate the extent to which New York would later prosper through triangular trade with Caribbean sugar plantations and Britain. As historians would put it, “New York now lived by feeding the slaves who made the sugar that fed the workers who made the clothes and other finished wares that New Yorkers didn’t make for themselves.”4 This trade meant the value of the farmland on Greene Street increased and the British would not allow slaves to continue ownership. The combination of high transport costs on land and low transport costs at sea made farmland adjacent to ports especially valuable. After Dutch New Amsterdam became British New York in 1664, increasingly repressive British laws against slaves and blacks made it impossible for the ownership of Greene Street by “half-free” slaves to continue.

[JimDandy]

1. Sounds fascinating. Bookmarked to read later. n/t