Long ago, before maps or words were used, a little island formed.

Manhattan is completely on its own land mass. The island of Manhattan is largely a protrusion of granite, rising a few hundred feet from sea level. The southern tip and center of the island are virtually solid granite, while other areas are composed of softer soil. Topographically, Manhattan was originally covered with hilly thickets, and dense forests. Manhattan remained uninhabited by permanent settlement until the arrival on the Lenape around approx. 4000 B.C.E

Tall grasses and small animals lived on its shores.
Then came birds, possum, and raccoons to live in its woods.

Manhattan was rich with wildlife and had a plentiful environment to support it. Dense fields of wild flowers and berry bushes were home to fox, badger, beaver, possum and turkey. The forest of walnut, cedar, chestnut, maple and oak sheltered deer, boar and squirrel. The estuaries and rivers surrounding Manhattan teemed with porpoises, swans, seals, lobsters, oysters and many types of fish.

The First People came and built homes using sticks and bark. They lived with the land, hunting, gathering and planting crops.

The First People are the Lenape. They are a unique culture of nature-revering Algonquin people. The Lenape are not best described as a tribe, but as a “circle of similar people within the Algonquin Civilization. Len meaning “common” or “real” and ape (a-pey) meaning people. Lenape roughly translates as the “Real People”. It is, a term used to refer to the original settlers of New York and New Jersey. The land was sacred to the Lenape. They integrated their communities to the land rather than clearing and leveling it. They built wigwams and long houses out of bent saplings and covered them with bark or reed mats. They cultivated the land, practicing crop rotation, planting a variety of corn, squash, and beans. They traveled the rivers in dugout canoes carved from single logs and relied heavily on the sea for food.

The Dutch came searching for land and riches. They made maps of every place they explored.

Several other European explorers visited the shores of Manhattan prior to the Dutch. However, the Dutch were the first to build a semi permanent fortification. In 1598, the Dutch made their first explorations of the waters surrounding Manhattan. Henry Hudson explored the (Hudson) river all the way north to Albany in 1609. This page illustrates several aspects of European exploration that are unexplored by the story text. One aspect is the presence of rats on the ship. Rats often did travel with ships from port to port. They were often carriers of disease. Both rats and people brought disease to the New World that largely contributed to the decline of the Lenape civilization. also note the ethnic groups aboard the ship. Crews often would be made up of men picked up from port to port and one ship might have a crew made up of men from several continents and speaking several languages. And a last footnote, the man with the map is not meant to be Henry Hudson. All portraits of Henry Hudson suggest that he was in the prime of health when he first ventured to the New World. He was trim in physique, fit and strong from a life at sea. The man pictured with the map is more of a representation of the motives of imperial expansion and wealth that inspired such expeditions.

The Dutch traded fur and cut down timber.
They built a fort and a windmill on the land they cleared.

Unlike the Lenape, the Dutch cleared the land to make way for a massive fort that was to serve as a trading post for their lucrative fur trade. They traded mostly beaver pelts. By 1625, the available furs on Manhattan had been depleated. The Dutch practiced clear cutting to collect timber for building their fort and interior structures like windmills and granaries. This process of deforestation also led to the depopulation of animal life on Manhattan. In this illustration, you may note how few people are actually inside the fort. This is relatively true. During the day, most of the few hundred people would have been outside the fort conducting trade or foraging and surveying the land. Only a few sentinels would be left to occupy the fort, and everyone would return at night. The fort’s main function was to provide protection of stock piled trade goods.

The English sailed across the Atlantic too.
Many brought their families to start a new life.

The Dutch turned over the settlement of New Amsterdam to the British as a result of a war treaty designed to divide up trade routes between the two countries. This settlement was a tiny footnote on a treaty that was mostly concerned with who would control the Spice Islands of Indonesia and Micronesia. The treaty gave the Dutch exclusive rights to the Spice Islands, but in return they had to turn over all right to their settlements in the Americas to the English. Many English families came hoping to start businesses that were closed off to them at home by guilds that only accepted members on wealth and lineage. In Manhattan, free enterprise reined and many who had been of a common class started new lives as merchants and contractors instead of sharecroppers and day labor. These hopes were the very first foundations of what would be know as “The American Dream”.

These settlers built a colony, which became a nation where new freedoms grew.

Entrepreneurial spirit and the promise of potential of the vast natural resources of the Americas made the colonists want to become independent from England. These same factors brought many new European immigrants who were fleeing over-crowded cities, religious persecution, disease, and famine. Manhattan was an epicenter for trade, and the financial capital of the American colonies. These features made it both an example and catalyst for independence. This page illustrates several aspects of the American struggle for Independence that are unexplored by the story text. The quilt uses many symbols to tell the story of the American Revolutionary war. Please use the quilt symbol guide to decipher the many references.

In the background of the painting, is a building that is very important to this time period. Frances Tavern was a popular colonial tavern in lower Manhattan. The tavern was hosted to many significant figures during the Revolutionary war and was a secret meeting place of the Sons of Liberty. The tavern and its owner Samuel Frances acted as a cover for both supplies and funds for the patriots during the war. Frances Tavern still stands today on Pearl Street in Manhattan.

Boats and boats packed with people and their traditions,
languages, and new ideas clogged the shores.

American enterprise grew with advances in industrial technology and the seemingly limitless westward expansion of raw materials and land. These factors, combined with the ideologies of freedom and pursuit of happiness brought literally millions of people to Manhattan’s shores during the 1800’s. Manhattan became the eastern portal to the American Dream. Most immigrants coming to American planned to move westward seeking land. Still, almost all immigrants spent some time “earning” their way west by working in Manhattan to save up for the journey. They settled into pocket communities that were created out of people with common languages, cultural traditions and beliefs. Many of these cultural neighborhoods still exist today.

These people built skinny row houses on skinny roads with funny names.

Many buildings were built during the industrial revolution with cast iron architecture. It was a predecessor of steel and often used structurally for its weight bearing strength. It also appeared on the facades of buildings because it could be poured into castes of various elaborate forms. With millions of immigrants flooding into Manhattan, skinny tenement housing was the fast economical solution to over crowding. For 2$ to 3$ a month you could rent a room in a building that was 25 ft. wide by 100 ft. long and four stories high. This housing was common in most of the working class neighborhoods in Manhattan. With as many as 20 families to a building, people literally lived on top of each other. Tenement housing was often dangerous and unsanitary. It was built of wood and fire could easily spread from one building to another causing damage to whole blocks of housing. Funny street names, is a reference to the cultural mishmash of languages that make up the street names in Manhattan.

Crossing wide waters with iron and steel, engineers built great bridges.

Until the first bridge was finished, connecting Manhattan to Brooklyn in 1883, the main transport between the two islands was ferryboat. Ferryboats were costly, slow and unreliable in bad weather. Ferrying was a thriving business just the same, making 1200 crossings daily by 1872. The main reason for building bridges to Brooklyn was to ease the housing crisis in Manhattan. Despite the space efficient tenement housing in Manhattan, there was just not enough room for all the people. The first bridge to connect Manhattan to Brooklyn was the Brooklyn Bridge. Not long after it’s completion the Manhattan Bridge was built, opening in 1903. The Manhattan Bridge was the first bridge to Manhattan built specifically for automobiles.

Automobiles, planes and trains brought more people.
Some were just visiting and others chose to stay.

Through out the early 1900’s transportation improved across America. By the 1860’s, railroads stretched from coast to coast making cross-country trips possible. The invention of the automobile created a need for better roads. Steamboats and cruise liners brought thousands of people safely to Manhattan’s shores. Planes made it possible for oceans to be crossed in hours instead of weeks. All of these evolutions in transportation allowed people to travel at will and not only out of necessity. This brought new opportunities of business and tourism to the island.

With steel they built skyscrapers over one hundred stories high.

During the mid-19th century, steel became a relatively inexpensive mass-produced good. Today, steel is one of the most common materials in the world and is a major component in buildings, tools, automobiles, and appliances. It was the major component along with the invention of the elevator and other engineering advances that made building skyscrapers possible. Some of the first and most enduring skyscrapers in the world are in Manhattan. The Flatiron Building, Chrysler Building and Empire State Building are just a few of the first and best know of the many skyscrapers in Manhattan. Manhattan also has more skyscrapers than any other city in the world.

People started coming to see the sights, take pictures,
and share the city with the rest of the world.

Business thrived well beyond the industrial age and on into the 21st century making Manhattan not only a center for commerce but also a destination as one of the world’s most popular cities. Tourism is one of the largest industries in Manhattan. Over 40 million people visit Manhattan yearly. It is the most recognizable city in America to foreign travelers and the most visited. Innumerable books, movies and works of art reflect the various neighborhoods and subcultures of Manhattan celebration its popularity.

It grew and it grew and people still come.
The building of Manhattan is never done.

To learn about the future we must look to the past.

Manhattan's future is one of continual change, both for landscape and for the people. In the face of the destruction of landmark buildings such as the World Trade Center, it is necessary to open a dialogue with children about the history of change. Understanding that both landscape and culture change over time provides a framework for a child to accept new changes in their world. Acceptance of change is central to every child’s development. I hope that by showing change through history in Building Manhattan that children can see that change helped build a thriving city. Change is important. It is at work every day in our children’s lives, helping to build their futures.

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