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1660-1868
These views of New York depict a dynamic port city that changed dramatically in its first two centuries. From its modest beginnings as an outpost in the New World for the Dutch East India Company, New York was well on its way to commercial and cultural dominance of the young American nation in the post-Civil War years.
It was New York’s great ice-free harbor that caused the Dutch to select New Amsterdam as the “middlepunt” of the New Netherland colony, a point not lost upon the English who seized the town in 1664, renaming it for the Duke of York. In the second and third views, dating from 1854 and 1868, the growth of the city is apparent, as it shows the immense crowding of structures in Lower Manhattan and the northward expansion of the city, whose street grid already reached 155th Street. New York was well on its way to becoming a vast metropolis--and this was before most of the many bridges and tunnels were constructed to link the city together and fuel further growth.
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