Exploring Downtown

New York Unearthed
The underground chambers of "New York Unearthed," a museum operated by the South Street Seaport Museum, display the remarkable extent of archaeological finds in New York. These range from the surprisingly old-3,000-year-old pottery shards-to the rather new-1950s lunch counter artifacts. In between sit the castoffs of three centuries of city dwellers: Delft tiles and clay pipes from the Dutch, tenement medicine bottles from 19th-century immigrants, and children's dolls from the early 20th-century African-American community of Weeksville in Brooklyn.

Exhibits on the museum's lower levels graphically depict the potential finds, layer by layer, beneath a typical Wall Street building. The "Unearthing New York Systems Elevator" simulates a ride from street level down to the lowest levels of a typical "dig." And visitors can watch archaeologists work behind glass walls, cataloguing and conserving real finds.

The Shrine of Elizabeth Ann Seton
New York is a city of straight lines - it's the very rare building that curves. The rectory of the Shrine of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton occupies one of them: the elegant house built in 1793 for one James Watson, with an 1806 addition whose portico curves along State Street.

At the time, the entire area was a posh residential district lined with fine brick town houses; today the Watson House is the sole survivor, one of the few Downtown buildings that survived the Great Fire of 1835. The double-story wooden columns of the extension's upper floors are said to be made from old shipmasts.

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Watson House
John Wolfe Ambrose
John Ambrose Statue
New Amsterdam Plein: Nine
New Amsterdam Plein: One
New Amsterdam Plein: Eight
New Amsterdam Plein: Seven
New Amsterdam Plein : Six
New Amsterdam Plein: Two
New Amsterdam Plein: Five

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