We are currently working on an audio tour that highlights Brooklyn’s Dutch past. In 2018 we already made nine audio tours in the city and the state New York, focused on Dutch-American heritage. We weren’t able to create the Brooklyn tour at the time, but it had been on our wish list for a long time.
In 2024 and 2025 it will be commemorated that New York was founded 400 years ago, then still known as New Amsterdam. In this context, we received financial support from the Holland Society of New York, the Society of Daughters of Holland Dames and Dutch Culture USA.
There is still much in Brooklyn that reminds us of the Dutch presence. For starters, the name of this borough is an Anglicization of Breuckelen, the first Dutch colonial village founded on ‘t Lange Eijandt, now Long Island. We have great stories to tell at approximately 25 locations in Brooklyn.
The first audio tour we made was at the southern tip of Manhattan, about the origins of the colony of New Netherland and New Amsterdam. We are going to somewhat expand this tour, entitled ‘How Dutch Is New York? – The New Amsterdam Tour’.
In October we will be in New York for on-site research, with the intention of releasing the tours in Dutch and English in the izi.TRAVEL app soon after.