Petrus Stuyvesant’s Great House
Birth of a City: Nieuw Amsterdam & Old New York
PETRUS STUYVESANT'S GREAT HOUSE
Location: Whitehall Street between Pearl & State Streets
Dutch Name: Opt Waeter
Near this site stood the “Great House” of Petrus Stuyvesant (c. 1612-1672), Nieuw Nederland’s last director. A colonial administrator who had lost his right leg to a Spanish cannonball in the Caribbean, Stuyvesant arrived on Manhattan in 1647 to impose order on the Dutch West India Company’s diverse and outspoken colonists.
Stuyvesant encouraged the trade in enslaved Africans, and opposed giving rights to Jews, Lutherans, and Quakers. But under his capable rule, the town of Nieuw Amsterdam began to acquire the trappings of a city. Stuyvesant reluctantly surrendered the colony to an invading English fleet in 1664. He retired to his farm, or Bouwerie, in the country (today’s East Village.)
Stuyvesant’s mansion was built here in 1658 close to the shore. The house was located near the town’s first wharf (1648), at what is now the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets. Later generations of New Yorkers added new land and pushed the waterfront out to South Street. An archeological dig on Pearl Street in 1983 unearthed Dutch artifacts, including imported pottery and glassware.
Marker is on Whitehall Street, on the right when traveling south.
Courtesy hmdb.org
