The “Ideal City” of New Amsterdam: Seventeenth-Century Netherlandic City Planning in North America

Had Willem Verhulst executed the plans conveyed to him by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) for New Amsterdam, in 1625, it would have become the first planned city in North America. The instructions retained the earlier principles of city planning as seen in the Dutch Republic, based on the latest Italian theories. For reasons unknown, Verhulst never fully executed the instructions. Instead of becoming a well-planned fortified settlement, New Amsterdam became a town reminiscent of old world cities, such as its namesake Amsterdam.

The instructions give an insight into the procedures of city planning as envisioned by the WIC. Several of the instructions for New Amsterdam reflect the theories put forth by the Dutch mathematician Simon Stevin (1548-1620). Stevin envisioned the ideal city along the orthogonal lines of the Roman castrum, combining defensive, capitalist, and secular elements. Stevin’s ideal plan contained three layers. The first was the plan, made up of streets and building parcels. The second was the space in which people moved and traded. The third level was that of organization, in which not only military and government intersected, but also public and private functions. The ideal plan for New Amsterdam did not follow the orthogonal lines of Stevin’s plan but did consider how the city would have functioned spatially and organizationally.

Both the Dutch East and West India Companies succeeded in laying out settlements inspired by Stevin’s theories, but it was not until 1682 that colonial America saw its first gridiron plan with the design of Philadelphia. Verhulst’s instructions not only broaden our knowledge of early settlements in North America but also of the divide between theory and practice during the colonial period. What would have perhaps been practical in the Old World turned out to be less realistic in the New World.