NEVER happened before, they say: the mayor of New York has been indicted for fraud and corruption. Eric Adams firmly denies having done anything wrong, but either way: his trial is coming, and New York prosecutors very rarely lose. Although, the son of Annie Stuyvesant from Peperga, Friesland, Nicholas Bayard, was once also mayor of New York, and he was sentenced to death for high treason in 1702. But the prosecutor was also judge and jury in those days, and Bayard’s friends ran him out of town. Nick was reinstated. His grandson Steven, Margreet van Cortlandt’s kid, also became mayor years later. Bayard Street near Brooklyn Bridge honors grandfather and grandchild.
New York has been governed by a long line of mayors of Dutch origin. You notice it immediately once you land at JFK airport: the first road sign that you see as you leave the terminal is the one that points to Van Wyck Expressway. Robert van Wyck was a descendant of Barend van Wijk of Wijk bij Duurstede, and one of the many Dutch mayors of New York long after the city had changed its name.
When the English took over the administration of New Amsterdam in 1664, naming it after Crown Prince James, Duke of York, basically nothing really changed on the ground. The city remained a version of Amsterdam, a melting pot of foreigners. By comparison, more than 280 different languages are being spoken in Amsterdam today by folks from more than 200 countries, more than in New York, and it has been like that for centuries. The Dutch have known how to run a pluralistic city since their golden age.
WHICH CAME in handy: the first five hundred people in Manhattan alone spoke eighteen different languages, and as the city grew, that plurality only increased. Controlling such a community with rules and law enforcement was no problem for the Dutch immigrants. But the English had no idea as to how to manage it, so after going through three mayors in three years, they quickly enlisted the help of Kees van Steenwijk, and he brought order. A job so well done that they asked him back again some time later. Steenwick Avenue is named after him.
New York has been built up under the governing hands of men with names like Van Cortlandt, Delanoy from Haarlem, Rombouts, two brothers De Peyster, De Reimer, Hoffman (descendant of the De Witts from Dordrecht), Willem Pereboom who changed his name to Peartree, Walters, Jansen, Van Varick from Rhenen, father and son Jan Cruger, Lodwik, originally Lodewyck, DeWitt Clinton, Robert Morris (descendant of Amsterdam’s Trijntje Staats), Eddie Livingston (Margreet Beekman’s child), Westervelt, Opdyke, Hoffman, Coman, Lindsay whose mother’s name was Van der Vliet, from Zaltbommel, and Robert van Wyck, in his spare time president of the Holland Club. All were mayors of New York.
AND MOST of them you still run into on the street: not only Van Wyck, Bayard and Van Steenwijk, but also Westervelt Avenue, three times Cortlandt: Street, Way and Alley, Peartree (formerly Pereboom) Avenue, Varick Street, Livingston Street, Hoffman Island on Staten Island, Morris Street, and so on.
They each had their strengths and their weaknesses, like any of us. Most were cheered, some were jeered. But none of them sank to the level where they stealthily accepted money, goods and services to the extent Mayor Eric Adams has now been accused of. One thing seems certain: there will not be a second Adams Street. There is already one, in Brooklyn, named after America’s first ambassador to the Netherlands. His name was John. Eric must fear that he’ll be doing time on an island 10 miles north that for two centuries was owned by the Amsterdam Rycken family. Rikers Island is today’s Alcatraz.
* Photo: Mayor Adams visited Rikers Island in 2022. Possibly not for the last time.
