In New York, there are many houses built in the “Netherlandish Style,” a style of building found in the Netherlands and nearby in what are now France, Germany, and Belgium.  The digital Exhibition Exploring American’s Dutch Heritage: A Tour of Netherlandish Sites in New York State, allows users to find locations, images, and information about surviving homes in this special style.

Dr. Chelsea Teale, the director of the New Netherland Research Center, developed the exhibit using StoryMaps.

New Netherland was settled by people from this region (and beyond), and the structures they built in the colony shared many characteristics. Styles changed over time as new limitations, adaptations, and influences emerged in New Netherland and later New York and New Jersey (and along the Delaware River), but some preferences remained. The result is a collection of structures from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries that were well-maintained and/or built with durable materials like stone and brick. In some areas, however, it is difficult to assign a single style to a building; examples include French (Huguenot) contributions in Ulster County and German (Palatine) contributions in Dutchess County.

Currently, the exhibit includes homes in Albany, Bronx, Columbia, Duchess, Greene, Kings, Montgomery,  and Nassau, New York, Orange, Queens, Rensselaer, Richmond, Rockland, Schenectady, Schoharie, Sullivan, Ulster, and Westchester Counties.

This StoryMap was made possible with the generous support of Dutch Culture USA and the Hudson River Valley Greenway Grant Program.