Fort Amsterdam is a fort on the southern tip of Manhattan that is no longer standing today. Its construction, which began in 1620, marks the official founding date of New York City.
Fort Amsterdam was the administrative headquarters of the Dutch when they founded Manhattan, but changed hands eight times through various battles, and changed name to Fort James, then Fort Willem Hendrick, back to Fort James, then to Fort William, Fort Anne and Fort George.
The Americans took over Fort Amsterdam on Evacuation Day, in 1783. In 1790 they demolished it. However, realising they need a fort to protect Manhattan, they built a new one at Castle Clinton, just before the War of 1812. The site of Fort Amsterdam is today the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House.
Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.
While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.