Join us for a bicycle tour of Dutch farmhouses in Brooklyn! This website is used during a guided bicycle tour on May 12th 2018, but it’s also possible to use this website to do the tour later, by yourself (or to just read more about the Dutch history of Brooklyn).

The bicycle tour is part of the Historical Data & Maps meetup series of NYPL’s NYC Space/Time Directory.

Start tour

Tour locations:

  1. The Wyckoff House Museum
  2. Hendrick I. Lott House
  3. Elias Hubbard Ryder House
  4. Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead
  5. Vanderveer-Cortelyou House

The Tour

Saturday May 12th at noon, bicycle tour participants will gather in Grand Army Plaza near the Brooklyn Public Library. The tour begins with a short presentation about the Dutch-American architectural history of early Brooklyn, by Walter R. Wheeler. Participants then depart for a 3-hour tour through the former towns of Flatlands, Gravesend and Flatbush, visiting five Dutch farmsites on the way, before returning to Prospect Park. Total distance: about 15 miles; about 90 minutes of riding with frequent stops/breaks.

At some sites, the group will briefly tour the surviving farmhouses. At others, views of the exteriors will be available. The last “site” will be the former location of a now-demolished farmhouse, demonstrating what used to stand in the now dense apartment-block landscape of central Flatbush.

Start tour

Tour locations:

  1. The Wyckoff House Museum
  2. Hendrick I. Lott House
  3. Elias Hubbard Ryder House
  4. Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead
  5. Vanderveer-Cortelyou House
Route map
Route map, by Lori Richmond – view high-res PDF (14MB)
The Six Towns of Brooklyn
Original Six Towns of Kings County from Brooklyn: the five original Dutch and one original English townships – Brooklyn, Flatbush, Flatlands, Bushwick, New Utrecht and Gravesend (1946)
Start tour

Tour locations:

  1. The Wyckoff House Museum
  2. Hendrick I. Lott House
  3. Elias Hubbard Ryder House
  4. Wyckoff-Bennett Homestead
  5. Vanderveer-Cortelyou House

About

The tour is supported as part of the Dutch Culture USA program by the Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York. Special thanks to the Brooklyn Public Library’s Brooklyn Collection. This event is part of the Historical Data & Maps meetup series of NYPL’s NYC Space/Time Directory. Additional funding by StreetDeets.

Consulting Architectural Historian
Walter R. Wheeler
Illustrator
Lori Richmond
Producers
Bert Spaan & Jeremy Lechtzin

You can view the source code of this website on GitHub. It’s easy to adapt the source code and use if for a new bicycle or walking tour.

Download route files: