New Utrecht, Brooklyn



New Utrecht was the last of the five Dutch towns and one English town to be founded in what is today the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. It was named after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. In 1652 Cornelius van Werckhoven, a surveyor born in Utrecht and a principal investor in the Dutch West India Company, began purchasing land from the Canarsee and Nyack tribes. Upon his death in 1655, surveyor Jacques Cortelyou received permission to sell lots of the land to create a town. Cortelyou created the Castello Plan, the first map of New York City.

Twenty lots were laid out. Nicasius di Sille, an attorney from Arnhem in the Netherlands, became one of the first to purchase a lot and build a house, using locally available stone and red roof tiles imported from Holland. He moved to New Utrecht from his Nieuw Amsterdam residence located near the current intersection of Broad Street and Exchange Place. Di Sille was employed as an advisor to Petrus Stuyvesant and as a "schout fiscal," a combination of sheriff and district attorney. In 1660 di Sille's List of the Inhabitants of Nieuw Amsterdam was completed at the behest of Stuyvesant. The names and addresses on the list correspond to the houses drawn on the Castello Plan. During the American Revolution, the British brought to his house the mortally wounded American General Nathaniel Woodhull, who ultimately died there.

New Utrecht was granted status as a village in 1657 and received its charter in 1661, when the entire region was part of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. New Netherland later came under British rule in 1664 as the colony of New York. The New Utrecht Reformed Church was chartered in 1677. In 1683, when Kings County was established within the colony of New York, New Utrecht was one of its six original towns: five were Dutch, and the sixth was the English town of Gravesend, founded by Lady Deborah Moody. On July 1, 1894, New Utrecht was annexed by the City of Brooklyn, which ultimately became part of the City of New York on January 1, 1898.

The area that encompassed the town center of New Utrecht is located in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. Eighty-fourth Street between 16th and 17th Avenues approximates the main thoroughfare of the town, part of Kings Highway from farther east. The rest of the town's lands are today the neighborhoods of Borough Park, which has a large Hasidic Jewish population, and Bay Ridge. Bay Ridge was formerly known as Yellow Hook, but the name was changed due to the outbreaks of yellow fever that struck the area. The Bensons were one of the original Dutch settlers in New Utrecht. Some of the names of the other original families in New Utrecht are di Sille, Van Pelt, Cropsey and Nostrand. Cropsey Avenue and Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn are named for the last two.