Mapping early New York

See how New York City has grown since 1609

Wall Street and the southern tip of Manhattan were the first parts of the island to be developed beyond farmland by Dutch and English settlers. It wasn’t long until New York City resembled the city we know today.

The evolution of New York City

Originally founded as New Amsterdam, this interactive timeline lists out and provides deep dives on the major events that shaped New York City as it became America's foremost cultural and economic hub.

A timeline of Wall Street's history

Wall Street's historical timeline starts with Wall Street getting its name in the 1600s and ends with details about the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011.

New York was once called New Amsterdam

Although New York has a long history, it wasn’t actually called “New York” until the late 1600s, when the English beat out the Dutch for control of the area. In 1664, Dutch Governor Peter Stuyvesant surrendered what used to be known as “New Amsterdam” to the English, who renamed it New York after the Duke of York.

Wall Street has come a long way since the 1600s

Wall Street originated as part of a Dutch settlement and soon became the nation's financial hub. But Wall Street has since morphed into eight blocks of luxury gyms and apartments.

See a timeline of colonial settlement in North America.

The history of Wall Street as a financial center dates back to the 1700s, beginning with the establishment of the New York Stock Exchange and New York City's first official slave market.

The architectural evolution of New York City's Chinatown

Cityscapes continuously evolve, and each stage in their transformation tells a unique story. In Manhattan's Chinatown from the 1940s to today, the architecture has bloomed from an ethnic conclave for often mistreated migrants to a vibrant cultural hub today. See varying elevations and facades over time.

In 1711, the New York City Common Council decided that the city’s slave market would operate on Wall Street

In 1711, the New York City Common Council decided that the city’s slave market would operate on Wall Street. Back then, the nation’s economy rode on the backs of slave labor and the slave trade itself—meaning that the slave market’s location was an economic hub for the city.

A timeline of colonial settlement

An overview of early American settlement, beginning with the London Company's expedition to Virginia. Source includes a number of citations for further reading.

The origin and history of stock exchanges

When were stocks first sold? Though debt was first sold in Venice in the 14th century, stocks proper began in the Netherlands. To fund its spice trade across the world in 1602, the Dutch East India Company sold stocks to individual investors, a novel approach to raising funds. It was the Dutch West India Company that founded New York—the site of some of the world’s greatest stock exchanges. Listen to a concise historical overview here.

The Erie Canal transformed New York City into America’s banking capital

By redirecting western trade through New York Harbor, the canal turned New York into the nation’s commercial hub. This surge in commerce shifted financial power from Philadelphia to Wall Street, establishing the city as America’s banking capital.

A stock market timeline

The stock market has come a long way since the 1600s, when the first version of a stock exchange was created in Amsterdam. Mile markers along the way include everything from the Dow Jones Industrial Average's creation in 1896 to the stock market woes during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

An AI-built pixel map reimagines New York City as a video game

Isometric NYC is a zoomable pixel-art map that renders the city in game-style perspective (think SimCity), helpfully clarifying the dense geography and architecture. The makers built the project tile-by-tile using satellite data and generative AI. Zoom into building-level views or out to see all five boroughs.

New York City's carriage horses are a holdover from a time when the city was home to hundreds of thousands of horses roaming its streets.

A map of Barcelona from 150 BCE to 2010

Watch Barcelona evolve from Iberian settlements in 150 BCE to Spain’s second-largest city in the modern day by toggling this chronological series of 27 maps. Accompanied by a short contextual blurb, each map shows Barcelona’s steady urbanization over more than two millennia. For those captivated by the interactive, read this interview with one of the project’s key cartographers. He discusses how the mega-map was created and what it reveals about Barcelona’s history.

Take a video tour of Wall Street's historic architecture, guided by a professional architect.

Essential pipes, sewers, and cables lie buried beneath New York City

The Department of Design and Construction offers a tour of its work sites, explaining the complex systems that exist underground. Gas, electrical, telecom pipes, and many others, sprawl out underneath the entire city, with dozens of maps that help workers know where they're placed. This layout is unusual compared to the rest of the country, where wires are often present and visible above ground.

Explore how 10,000 different American cities got their name.

The history of the world map

What did people used to think the world looked like? From the beginning of human history to right before the age of exploration, learn how the world maps were created.

New York was a hotbed of early revolutionary activity

In the decade before independence, New York City saw Stamp Act riots, liberty pole confrontations, the 1770 Battle of Golden Hill, and defiance of the Quartering Act, and organized efforts to block and destroy taxed British tea.

A history of stock exchanges, from Venitain merchants to modern day

While the idea of stock exchanges—markets where securities can be bought and sold—is mostly synonymous with Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and other modern markets, places to buy and sell financial instruments have a long history....

DeWitt Clinton’s “Big Ditch” gamble transformed New York

Mocked as “Clinton’s Folly” and “Clinton’s Big Ditch,” New York Gov. DeWitt Clinton championed the Erie Canal against skeptics. His political drive secured funding for the project in 1817.

As technology evolved, so did Wall Street

Before the telephone was invented in the mid 1800s, people had to trade stocks in person. But once office telephones and computers became commonplace, banks and other financial institutions didn't necessarily need to have their headquarters near exchanges like Wall Street's New York Stock Exchange.

An overview of New York's iconic stoops

In New York City, stoops are cherished and fundamental aspect of life in many neighborhoods. In a city where yards are a rarity, stairways are places for New Yorkers to socialize and relax. Follow the history of these sites in this video, starting from their Dutch origins to their impact on city life today.

See a gallery of art and architecture at New York City's UN building

The group's nearly 200 member states have contributed art and cultural experiences to the New York campus since the building's founding in 1950. This gallery hosts hundreds of photos of the art on the premises.

Oral history and artifacts suggest the Wampanoag inhabited the area for 12,000 years

By 1621, Native Americans had been interacting with European explorers along the coasts for hundreds of years. European adventurers, including Giovanni da Verrazzano, mapped the coastline as early as 1524, as this timeline from the National Museum of the American Indian explains.

Explore an interactive timeline of technological inventions and social structures since 1500.

View depictions of world maps throughout history

The first map to use latitude and longitude positions was created by Ptolemy in 150 CE, over 700 years after the oldest known world map, the Imago Mundi, was made with a Babylonian clay tablet. The Spanish crown created a secret master map from hundreds of sailors’ reports.

Charting 4,000 years of human history

Care to hang all of human history on your wall? This data visualization charts 4,000 years of humanity. This "histomap" was originally published in 1931 and sold for $1 per copy of the 5-foot-long chart. It was said to detail the course of...

The bond market dates back to the 1100s in Venice

In the early 1800s, bonds were used to fund US railroads and canals in Great Britain. “Liberty Bonds” were sold during both World Wars in the 20th century. Learning about the early and modern history of bonds can offer a glimpse into how the modern bond market came to be.

A map of slavery's spread across the US

Need a visual on how prevalent slavery was in the US? Scroll through this interactive map and timeline based on census data from 1790 to 1860.

When the New York Stock Exchange was started in 1792, traders would meet both outside on the street and in coffee shops to do business.

Some colonies were centuries-old before they broke from Britain

The revolution did not happen overnight, but was a culmination of centuries of settlement, policies, and war in North America. This timeline provides key, fascinating events from the 1600s through the Revolution in a smooth, easy-to-read interface.

What is Silicon Alley?

The term "Silicon Alley" refers to an area in New York City once known for its high-tech startups, especially during the dot-com boom. Silicon Alley ran from New York City's Flatiron District through Soho to the Financial District. After the dot-com bubble burst, tech companies spread out through the rest of Manhattan and Brooklyn. Learn more about the area and how it compared to Silicon Valley in this article.

15,000 people from over 20 nations lived in these Lower East Side tenements

The Tenement Museum recreated authentic immigrant homes using artifacts from historic buildings that housed diverse communities between 1863 and 2011. Take a digital tour that explores the immigrant experience through carefully preserved living spaces and belongings.

The history of New York's first hotel for middle-class women

March 2, 1903, marked the opening of New York's first hotel just for women, generally from the middle class. Prior to the establishment of the "Women's Hotel," it was difficult for solo women to find lodgings in the city. Seeing an opportunity, Charles Day Kellogg raised funds to establish the 400-room hotel, which exclusively served women until 1998. Read more about its history here.

Hamilton founded what many regard as the first commercial bank in the United States

In 1784, Alexander Hamilton helped found the Bank of New York, which initially operated without a charter, financed early federal operations, provided what is considered the US government's first loan, and became the first stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

The New York Stock Exchange wouldn't have been made if not for municipal bond sales

The Funding Act of 1790 nationalized and consolidated the debt held by the 13 colonies to be sold off in the form of bonds.

See a timeline of jazz's history

Jazz began in 19th-century New Orleans, though its roots go back even further. This timeline situates the music's evolution alongside American and world history, offering an illuminating exploration of the genre.

The early years of the Met

The Met didn’t start out in the grand, sprawling grounds that it currently occupies. This episode of Hometown History, a podcast about lesser-known historical places and events, covers the early years of the venerable institution. Learn about how the vision and planning of a group of 19th century artists and philanthropists took the Met from a small collection in a humble brick building to the cultural powerhouse that it is today.

Infrastructure projects in New York are much more difficult today

The Erie Canal was one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in American history. Many have said such an effort would be impossible today. This article explores why that is the case and ponders the future of large-scale American infrastructure development.

New York City's carriage horses are at the center of a long-running debate over whether a centuries-old tradition still belongs in the country's largest city.

NYC's first subway was built largely in secret

In 1870, Alfred Ely Beach secretly tunneled under Broadway in 58 nights, disguising his pneumatic subway as a mail tube to fool Tammany Hall, the corrupt political machine that ran New York City. Nearly half a million New Yorkers rode it before politics, and a stock market crash killed the project.

The Erie Canal runs 363 miles from Albany to Buffalo

Mostly using the low elevations of the Mohawk River Valley, the canal project connected the Great Lakes to the Atlantic seaboard for the first time. This site has a series of old and new maps of the canal.

The world's oldest stock exchange was called the Amsterdam Stock Exchange

What is now referred to as Euronext Amsterdam got its start centuries ago, in the early 1600s. Back then, it was called the Amsterdam Stock Exchange—and it might not have existed without the Dutch East India Co.'s desire to raise funding for its seafaring ventures.

Visualizing New York City's public transportation commutes

New York City is one of the largest cities in the world, and transports one of the largest numbers of commuters on a daily basis. This data visualization tells the stories of those commuters, showing the varying volume of travelers throughout the week and day, where they are going, and maps of high-traffic areas like stadiums and midtown. Dive into the data here.

Clark’s maps provided the first detailed record of the American West

Covering over 8,000 miles, William Clark’s maps charted rivers, mountains, and tribal territories with remarkable accuracy. Equipped with sextants, compasses, telescopes, and more, Clark became an expert at surveying—requiring extensive celestial and topographical observations each day.

Why Amsterdam looks so unique

The Netherlands' capital consists of concentric canals lined with towering, unusually thin row homes, an altogether unique profile in Europe and the world. When it was growing, the city was a key trade hub, and merchants wanted direct access to waterways. Canals were built like roads, and houses were required to be very thin to allow for more homes to line the canals.

The State of the Union address was first delivered in New York City

The first address took place in New York City in 1790, when President George Washington addressed Congress at Federal Hall—the nation's capital under the Articles of Confederation and the seat of the federal government during the Constitution's first year.