The town of New Amsterdam was born as an economic hotspot. When Henry Hudson arrived in New York Bay in 1609, he found a land rich with furs, fish, and plants. From 1624, settlers employed by the West India Company traded European goods to the local people for beaver pelts to ship back to Europe. They soon transformed the bay into a commercial seaport embedded in a global Dutch trading empire.
By the late 1650s, New Amsterdam was a wealthy city that experienced a commercial boom. One of its most successful merchants was Cornelis Steenwijck. Born in Haarlem in the Dutch Republic, he arrived in New Amsterdam in 1651. Steenwijk lived in a house at present day Pearl Street and used the bottom floor of his home as a shop. He exported raw materials like timber and animal furs to Europe and imported duffel cloth, pipe stems, liquor, and gunpowder to sell in the colony. Part of his wealth also came from the expanding trade in enslaved Africans.
Introduction
Cornelis van Steenwijck
Steenwijck became a political leader, serving three terms as schepens and becoming burgomaster in 1664. When the city was taken by the English, he skillfully formed new partnerships with English merchants while continuing his relationships with the Dutch Republic. By the early 1670s, he was the second wealthiest man in New York. He served three terms as New York City’s mayor and died in early 1685.
Steenwijck’s life as a prominent entrepreneur and influential political leader made him an important transitional figure in early New York’s history, someone who preserved early Dutch traditions and practices, and carried them into the late 17th century and beyond.