Editing New Amsterdam (section)

===Fort Amsterdam (1624)===
{{main|Fort Amsterdam }}
[[File:Verkoopakte Manhattan.jpg|thumb|1626 letter in Dutch by Pieter Schaghen stating the purchase of Manhattan for 60 gulden.]]
[[File:Hudson Valley Map Detail Nova Belgica Et Anglia Nova c1634.jpg|thumb|A map of the [[Hudson Valley|Hudson River Valley]] {{Circa|1634}} (north is to the right)]]

The threat of attack from other European colonial powers prompted the directors of the [[Dutch West India Company]] to formulate a plan to protect the entrance to the Hudson River. In 1624, 30 families were sponsored by Dutch West India Company moving from Nut Island to Manhattan Island, where a citadel to contain [[Fort Amsterdam]] was being laid out by Cryn Frederickz van Lobbrecht at the direction of [[Willem Verhulst]]. By the end of 1625, the site had been staked out directly south of [[Bowling Green (New York City)|Bowling Green]] on the site of the present [[Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House|U.S. Custom House]]. The [[Beaver Wars|Mohawk-Mahican War]] in the Hudson Valley led the company to relocate even more settlers to the vicinity of the new Fort Amsterdam. In the end, colonizing was a prohibitively expensive undertaking, only partly subsidized by the fur trade. This led to a scaling back of the original plans. By 1628, a smaller fort was constructed with walls containing a mixture of clay and sand.

The fort also served as the center of trading activity. It contained a barracks, the church, a house for the West India Company [[Directors of New Netherland|director]] and a warehouse for the storage of company goods.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://nyharborparks.org/0media/nat-tour-brochure.pdf|title="The New Amsterdam Trail", National Parks of New York Harbor Conservancy|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111204073848/http://nyharborparks.org/0media/nat-tour-brochure.pdf|archive-date=December 4, 2011}}</ref> Troops from the fort used the triangle between the ''[[Broadway (Manhattan)|Heerestraat]]'' and what came to be known as [[Whitehall Street]] for marching drills.