We have completed our tenth (!) audio tour of Dutch-American heritage in New York (City and State), entitled “How Dutch Is New York? – The Brooklyn Tour.

In 25 tour stops we tell stories about the Dutch origins of Brooklyn, which used to be inhabited by the Lenape, the original inhabitants of this part of America. 

We have visited virtually every house and location that has anything to do with Brooklyn’s Dutch past and selected the most interesting sites for this tour. 

Dutch settlers were on Manhattan as early as 1625 and about a decade later they crossed the East River (now East River) to start farms there. They founded several villages with names such as Breuckelen (now Brooklyn Heights), Boswijck (now Bushwick), Midwoud or ’t Vlacke Bosch (now Flatbush), Nieuw-Amersfoort (now Flatlands), ‘s-Gravesande (now Gravesend) and Nieuw-Utrecht (now New Utrecht). 

Of the buildings that have stood the test of time, the Wyckoff House Museum is the only house from the Dutch colonial period in all of New York City that still exists. Of course, this is part of this audio tour!

Because the Dutch also introduced their religion to New York, there are still churches and cemeteries of the Dutch Reformed Church in Brooklyn. Other gems are the wooden houses with their clapboard façades, some still privately owned and/or occupied. They are the quiet and nostalgic reminders of the past: the Hubbard House, the Van Nuyse houses, the Lott House, the Lefferts House, the Wyckoff-Bennet House, and others. And there is also – not made of wood, as the name indicates – the Old Stone House.

We have tried to keep the information balanced by not getting too nostalgic: there is another side of the Dutch past, such as the indigenous peoples who were driven off their land and the introduction and use of enslaved Africans in this part of the world.

Watch and listen to this tour and the many stories we have to tell! To do so, go to our Projects/USA page and click on the Brooklyn Tour.

We also recently updated and expanded the New Amsterdam Tour!If you are in New York City, walk or ride our tours. After the first download, the tours in the izi.TRAVEL app are no longer free. However, they are all free to download in the tmatic.travel app!