"Wow" History of Lower Manhattan: Understanding New York City's Dutch Origins

About this activity

Audio tour
Audio tour in English
Route length: 2 miles
Instant confirmation
Duration 1h 30m
Audio tours on your smartphone
After purchase, you will receive the link to download the app to take this tour
Control your experience
With the in-app audio guide, you decide when to start, pause, and finish your tour
No internet is required
All audio tours and tickets can be downloaded to your device anytime

Tour preview

Hosted by Dutch Heritage World Tours
$6
Instant confirmation
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  • You'll receive a self-guided audio tour right after booking
  • Follow this private in-app audio tour to discover the Dutch heritage of New York
  • Catch up with New York City's aspiring Dutch past that ensured its bright American future
  • Get to know how beavers influenced New York City's history and helped spur the city's development
  • Solve the puzzles of the Manhattan's financial district streets' names rooted in the Dutch era
  • Find out how much it cost to purchase Manhattan Island from the Native Americans
Take this in-app audio tour to reveal the glorious history of the city, founded by the Dutch colonists in 1625 as New Amsterdam, to become the cultural capital of America, and the whole world! With its rustic windmill, New York once took just a few blocks of today's city, from Battery Park to Wall Street, and left a legacy of street patterns and place names that is insightful to embrace. You will start the tour at the Friendship Monument to learn the New Netherland colony foundation plot in detail. Across the road, you will see the National Museum of the American Indian, a place where Fort Amsterdam was located to defend the colony. Then, you will promenade a riverfront of the time, Pearl Street, as a Dutch settler would. Here you will see the Fraunces Tavern, the oldest building in Lower Manhattan, built in 1719. From there, you will come to the first paved street in the city, the historic Stone Street, famous for its breweries. Around the corner, you will spot the flamboyant step-gabled houses of South William Street to reimagine traditional Dutch architecture. You will be amazed by what the busy Wall Street of today once was: a humble path along the defensive wooden fence. In its line, you will be allured with the statuesque landmark, Trinity Church, once the tallest building in the city. To round up, you will walk the main road of the colony, today's Broadway, used by the Native Americans long before the Dutch arrived and chartered it.

What's included

  • Self-guided audio tour for your smartphone on the WeGoTrip app
  • Detailed route with step-by-step navigation from one stop to another
  • Recommendations on the historical Dutch breweries and restaurants to visit
  • Earphones — you should use your own
  • Earphones and smartphone are not included – bring your own
  • In-person tour guide

Places you will visit

The route of the tour goes within circle
Battery Park
The Battery, Manhattan
Cortlandt Street
Cortlandt Street, Manhattan
Download the app and the digital audio tour on your smartphone before the visit. You will find recommendations on how to get to the staring point in the first step of the tour. If you have any questions or need any assistance, please email us at support@wegotrip.com.
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Cancellation policies vary according to activity type. Please check the conditions of your required activity Self-guided audio tour.
  Dutch Heritage World Tours develops multilingual audio tours with Dutch heritage outside The Netherlands as the main theme. If you find that any part of our tours aren’t working properly, please contact us by email so we can correct the error. It would be much...

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