Even old New York / Was once New Amsterdam / Why they changed it I can’t say / People just liked it better that way

- They Might Be Giants: “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)”

This map is doubly strange. It simultaneously depicts the wrong city, and under a previous name – the former error committed on purpose, the latter possibly unwittingly.

Dated 1672, this map by Frenchman Gérard Jollain purports to represent Nowel Amsterdam en Lamerique (New Amsterdam in America) – the inset top left even shows its position relative to other Dutch possessions such as Le Fort d’Orange (present-day Albany, NY) and Fort Nassau (now Gloucester City, NJ), surrounding Indian tribes like the Maquimanes, Capitanasses, Senecas and the Lacs des Iroquois peuples tres cruels (lakes of the Iroquois, very cruel people); and the neighbouring English colony of Massachusets (sic).

But the main map – one of the first bird’s eye views of a North American city – is not of New Amsterdam. This depiction of a hilly metropolis, densely packed with churches and palaces, bears no resemblance to the fledgling city then clinging to Manhattan’s southern tip. It is an almost identical copy of a popular map (1) of Lisbon, the Portuguese capital.

Was it the windmills (2) on the horizon of the original (shown at the bottom of this post) that gave Jollain the idea to transmogrify Old Lisbon into New Amsterdam? The street grid, buildings and topography are copied fairly exactly and in great detail; but however blatant the forgery is, Jollain took pains to infuse it with a Dutch atmosphere.

The ships bobbing on the Mer du Nort (Atlantic Ocean) in the foreground of the forged map are clearly of a different (and doubtlessly more appropriate) type than those on the Tagus, in front of Lisbon. Most city blocks are rendered in similar layouts, but the meticulously drawn individual houses are different.

The larger buildings are visually identical to the originals, but obviously serve a different purpose. Lisbon’s grand cathedral is New Amsterdam’s impressive Maison de Ville (City Hall). Lisbon’s Central Square becomes New Amsterdam’s Amirauté (Admiralty), the castle of São Jorge on one of Lisbon’s hilltops the Chateau de Nassau (Nassau Castle) (3).

Jollain embellishes the original with a few fantastic additions of his own. An unnamed castle on a distant Portuguese hilltop becomes the even more distant French fortress of Quebec. An empty hilltop left of the castle of São Jorge in Lisbon is occupied by a gallows in New Amsterdam, chillingly named La Iustice (Justice). A building at the foot of that hill is the location of het Tuchthuys cesta dire Maison de Dicipline, aussi en icele (?) sont renfermer des Faineans que lon fait trauailler (The prison, where lazy people are also imprisoned and made to work).