Brouwers

Brouwers of Stone Street may have opened its doors to New York in the summer of 2006, but its location harkens back to a time when New York wasn't even New York. Almost four centuries ago, New York was Niewu Amsterdam, one of the first Dutch colonies in the New World. Stone Street was one of its first streets, known then as Brouwers Street, which translates to "Brewers Street" in deference to its location as the site of the brewery of the Dutch West India Company, as well as the homes of some of the early Dutch elite involved in brewing. Only one street long, it curved to a canal that ran along the line of the present Broad Street. Brouwers stands on property that was once owned by Jacob Wolphertsen van Courwenhoven. By the mid-1650's, residents tired of the unpaved street, which often bogged down carts toting the bounty of the breweries.Ten residents petitioned the burgomasters in 1655 "to pave the said street with round stone on the first favorable opportunity." Eventually, Brouwers Street got its stone and a new name as well: Stone Street, the first paved street in the colony. Following the transfer of Nieuw Amsterdam from the Netherlands to England in the late 1660's when the colony first became New York, Stone Street (which had merged with the former Hoogh, or High Street, east of Broad Street) received another name change in 1691, this time to Duke Street. After the American Revolution, many New York streets that echoed the former English ownership were renamed. In the 1790's, Stone Street regained its name, and so it remains.A great economic and architectural loss to New York, buildings dating from the 1600's, 1700's and early 1800's on Stone Street were obliterated during the Great Fire of 1835 when between 500 and 700 buildings were destroyed in a fire whose glowing flames could be seen as far away as Philadelphia.