Stuyvesant Farm

1, the largest and northernmost of six initial estates of the Dutch West India Company north of New Amsterdam, used as the official residence and economic support for Willem Verhulst and all subsequent directors of the colony.

The building that would become Stuyvesant's Bowery Mansion was most likely a structure originally erected by the Dutch West India Company's carpenters in 1633.

Van Twiller was fired in 1637 and when his replacement, Willem Kieft, arrived in 1638, he found the colony in disarray outside of the impressive Bowery No.1.

On March 12, 1651, the company directors in Amsterdam authorized the sale of the farm with its dwelling house, barns, woods, six cows, two horses and two African slaves for ƒ6,400 to Stuyvesant, acting through his agent Jan Jansen Damen.

Stuyvesant diminished free African-owned properties in the neighboring Land of the Blacks settlement by appropriating some of them to himself, through both purchases and fiat, though most stayed intact.

[7] Terms were generous enough that Stuyvesant kept his estate and lived the rest of his life there, after a three-year trip back to the Netherlands until the Peace of Breda.

[11] The family land area gradually declined into the 19th century as pieces were sold off, both commercially and in some cases to local institutions for a nominal price.

[28][29] The estate included a wetland known as Stuyvesant Meadows, part of which was later filled and converted to form Tompkins Square Park.

The tree remained there, through the founding of Kiehl's Pharmacy at the same corner in 1851, until February 1867 when, weakened by a massive winter storm, it toppled by a wagon collision.