Stadt Huys, New York City

Title: "The Stadthuys of New York in 1679 corner of Peal St. and Coentijs Slip". Engraving by George Hayward. Source: New York Public Library.

The old city tavern became the Stadt Huys (City Hall) in February 1653, during the Dutch rule of New York. It stood at the corner of what is now Broad and Pearl streets. Peter Stuyvesant (c.1610-1672) was then the Dutch director-general of the colony of New Netherland. Continue below..

Stokes, I. N. Phelps (The iconography of Manhattan Island..., 1915), published a very similar illustration in his Volume 1 (from a lithograph in Murphy’s translation of the Labadist Journal, also engraved by G. Hayward), calling it the "Brevoort Redraft". According to Stokes, the date depicted is 1679-1680 and it was issued in 1867. The illustration is a rectified redraft by J. Carson Brevoort of a portion of the Labadist General View of New York, accompanying the MS. Journal of a Voyage to New York, probably drawn by Jasper Danckaerts. Stokes also wrote that:

«This view shows the Stadt Huys, and doubtless gives the best idea which we have of this important building during its most prosperous days. The opening into Coenties Alley is distinctly shown at the right of the Stadt Huys. The land end of the Long Dock is also depicted, as well as the battery, built probably in 1661, as it appears on “The Duke’s Plan” of September, 1661 (...), and not on the Castello Plan (...) which was probably drawn earlier in the same year...

Lovelace’s tavern adjoins the Stadt Huys on the left. It is interesting to note that the St. Nicholas Society owns a copper wind-vane in the form of a cock, presented to them, in 1848, by Washington Irving, which wind-vane is said to have been removed from the Stadt Huys when it was demolished in 1700, and was afterwards used at Sunnyside, Sleepy Hollow, N. Y. Although this is, of course, possible, there is no official confirmation of this pedigree, and it seems more likely that the weather-vane really belonged to the later Federal Hall, on Wall Street, which we know from several contemporary pictures had a vane in the form of a cock. The cupola containing the bell, shown on the Stadt Huys, was probably erected in 1656.»