Russell Shorto returns to fascinating history of a unique city in Taking Manhattan, a book showing how New Amsterdam became New York

In lower Manhattan, at Pearl Street and Coenties Alley in the oldest part of New York City, walls and a cistern are visible under the sidewalk, through pains of clouded glass. Next to them, the outline of a 17th-century building is marked in colored brick.

“That is the footprint of the original Stadt Huys, which was first the city tavern and then became” the city hall of New Amsterdam, the author and historian Russell Shorto said. “When they were excavating to put in that skyscraper [85 Broad Street, built for Goldman Sachs in the 1980s], the archeologists identified and marked out those little bits.