Stand at the real sites and watch New Amsterdam rise around you, from the Wall to the Dock. A living reconstruction of the city, right where it stood, on your phone.
Try the appAlmost nothing of New Amsterdam survives above ground. The Dutch town that grew into New York lies buried beneath the streets of lower Manhattan, its houses, docks and gardens long gone under glass and concrete. Standing in the modern city today, you would never know it was there.
TimeLens brings it back with the New Amsterdam History Center. Working from careful historical research they rebuilt New Amsterdam exactly as it stood in 1660 and set it back where it belongs. Stand at a site, raise your phone, and see the Dutch settlement restored around you, the streets alive with traders and families, and look inside the homes where they lived their daily lives.
What makes these New Amsterdam reconstructions special is how complete they are. Based on the 1660 Castello Plan and additional historic sources they rebuilt not just the streets but even some of the rooms inside its houses, and even name the people who filled them, from the interpreter Sara Roelofs to the enslaved workers in her household.
Each TimeSpot is a real place in New York where you can stand and see the past restored in full, 360 degrees around you. Travel to a spot to unlock it, then look around the scene at your own pace. Below you can find every New Amsterdam TimeSpot we currently have and some of those we are working on.
Make your way to one of the historic locations shown on the map. Once you arrive, it automatically unlocks the TimeSpot for you.
Hold up your phone and take in the scene in every direction. A 360-degrees historic reconstruction of the city full of life.
For each location you discover, you receive a badge and some TimeCoins as a reward. Discovering combinations of TimeSpots even gives you special awards.
Every reconstruction takes months of research and craft. A small amount each month helps us build more of them, and brings you along for the journey, with early previews, behind the scenes insights, and a say in which places we bring back next. You can even have your name featured in the app, or appear as a figure in a future scene.
Support us on PatreonFollow the newest reconstructions, fresh TimeSpots and the stories behind our work in New York City, as the project keeps growing.
Want to see more updates about TimeLens in other locations, check out all the other updates below.
New Amsterdam 1660 is now in TimeLens, and we are celebrating where it belongs: in New York City itself. Together with the New Amsterdam History Center, we are hosting a New Amsterdam walking tour through lower…
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How can anyone know what a city looked like four hundred years ago, when almost every building is gone? For New Amsterdam, the answer is a single remarkable document: a map called the Castello Plan, drawn in 1660. It is…
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Almost everyone in the world will know Wall Street in NYC, but why does this famous street have this name? Why is Wall Street called Wall Street? This question is rather easy to answer if you imagine standing at the…
Read MoreEvery New Amsterdam TimeSpot is brought to you in collaboration with the New Amsterdam History Center. Each scene rests on their solid research. Their Mapping Early New York project spent years researching and modelling the Dutch city from the 1660 Castello Plan, and those models are the foundation of what you see. The narration is co-written and voiced by the historian Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World and Taking Manhattan.
Special thanks to Toya Dubin, Vanessa B. Sellers and Eduard van Dijk for making this collaboration possible.
