Jacques Cortelyou was an influential early citizen of New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....

 (later New York City) who was Surveyor General

Surveyor General

The Surveyor General is an official responsible for government surveying in a specific country or territory. Originally this would often have been a military appointment, but is now more likely to be a civilian post....

 of the early Dutch colony. Cortelyou's main accomplishment was the so-called Cortelyou Survey, the first map of New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, commonly called the Castello Plan

Castello Plan

The Castello Plan is an early city map of Lower Manhattan from 1660, created by Jacques Cortelyou, surveyor of New Amsterdam at that time....

 after the location in a Tuscan

Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of about 23,000 square kilometres and a population of about 3.75 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence ....

 palace where it was rediscovered centuries later.

Early life

Cortelyou arrived in Nieuw Amsterdam from Utrecht

Utrecht (city)

Utrecht city and municipality is the capital and most populous city of the Dutch province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, and is the fourth largest city of the Netherlands with a population of 312,634 on 1 Jan 2011.Utrecht's ancient city centre features...

, Holland, where he had been born to French Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France during the 16th and 17th centuries. Since the 17th century, people who formerly would have been called Huguenots have instead simply been called French Protestants, a title suggested by their German co-religionists, the...

 parents. Cortelyou had studied mathematics and land-surveying, and served first in Nieuw Amsterdam as tutor to the children of Cornelis van Werckhoven, to whom the Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...

 had granted a tract of land called New Utrecht

New Utrecht, Brooklyn

New Utrecht was the last of six towns to be founded in what is today the borough of Brooklyn in New York City. It was named after the city of Utrecht, Netherlands. In 1652 Cornelius van Werckhoven, a surveyor born in Utrecht and a principal investor in the Dutch West India Company, began purchasing...

. Cortelyou was subsequently appointed Surveyor General of the province of Nieuw Netherlands, and in 1660 made his famous map of Nieuw Amsterdam. Cortelyou also founded two subsequent settlements himself, New Utrecht on Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

. In 1660 he designed Bergen Square

Bergen Square

Bergen Square, at the intersection of Bergen Avenue and Academy Street in Jersey City, is in the southwestern part of the much larger Journal Square district...

 site of the first town within the present borders of the state of New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 to receive a municipal charter.

Cortelyou's career as surveyor and real estate speculator

The town of Bergen was located on the bluff "on the west side of the North River in Pavonia

Pavonia, New Netherland

Pavonia was the first European settlement on the west bank of the North River that was part of the 17th century province of New Netherland in what would become today's Hudson County, New Jersey.-Hudson and the Hackensack:...

," the present location of Bayonne

Bayonne, New Jersey

Bayonne is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. Located in the Gateway Region, Bayonne is a peninsula that is situated between Newark Bay to the west, the Kill van Kull to the south, and New York Bay to the east...

, Jersey City

Jersey City, New Jersey

Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...

, Hoboken

Hoboken, New Jersey

Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005. The city is part of the New York metropolitan area and contains Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the region...

 and Weehawken

Weehawken, New Jersey

Weehawken is a township in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the township population was 12,554.-Geography:Weehawken is part of the New York metropolitan area...

. Cortelyou and his associates had a financial interest in the outcome of the new settlement: they had purchased some "12,000 morgens at Aquackanonk on the Passaic, purchased by himself and associates of the Indians." There is some debate about the origin of the Bergen name, which happens to be the name of one of the earliest settlers of New Amsterdam. (The Bergen and Cortelyou families subsequently intermarried several times, indicating some degree of familiarity.) In any case, the year 1660 was the first time the word "Bergen" was used to describe the new settlement. Sadly, the original map of the Bergen settlement by Cortelyou, as well as the list of patentees, have been lost to history.

Cortelyou was active in Nieuw Amsterdam and later in New York. He was a real estate speculator, and served in many public offices. As the Surveyor General of the city, Cortelyou worked under Governor Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant

Peter Stuyvesant , served as the last Dutch Director-General of the colony of New Netherland from 1647 until it was ceded provisionally to the English in 1664, after which it was renamed New York...

. His most well-known accomplishment was his map of early lower Manhattan

Manhattan

Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, executed in 1660, and known as the Castello Plan. Cortelyou was also instrumental in helping to erect the wall, originally fortified against attacks by Native Americans, from which Wall Street

Wall Street

Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...

 derives its name.

Cortelyou's Castello Plan

Cortelyou's early plan of New York City was known as the Castello Plan

Castello Plan

The Castello Plan is an early city map of Lower Manhattan from 1660, created by Jacques Cortelyou, surveyor of New Amsterdam at that time....

 because it was later rediscovered at the Villa di Castello

Villa di Castello

The Villa di Castello is one of the Medici villas near Florence, Tuscany, central Italy. Its ideal design appears in a lunette painted by Giusto Utens in 1599. The property was purchased by Lorenzo de'Medici in 1477 on the site of an existing building which he had rebuilt...

 near Florence, Italy, in 1900. The map had been bound within an atlas that was sold to a member of the Medici

Medici

The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 family.

Further reading

• The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America, Russell Shorto, Doubleday, New York, 2004
• The Cortelyou Genealogy: A Record of Jaques Corteljou and of many of his Descendants, John Van Zandt Cortelyou, Brown Printing Service, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942

Trivia

• The architect Philip Johnson counted Jacques Cortelyou among his ancestors Philip Johnson: life and work, Franz Shulze, University of Chicago Press, 1996
• Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn is named for this early surveyor New York Times, June 5, 2005
• Cortelyou Road (BMT Brighton Line)
  Cortelyou Road (BMT Brighton Line)
  Cortelyou Road is a local station on the BMT Brighton Line of the New York City Subway, located at Cortelyou Road between Marlborough Road and East 16th Street in the neighborhood of Flatbush, Brooklyn. It is served by the Q train at all times. The Cortelyous were an old New Netherlands family...
  
  , thus derives its name from Jacques Cortelyou
• Lawrence Van Voorhees Cortelyou, a descendant of Jacques the surveyor, was a member of the Holland Society Names of Early Comers, The New York Times, January 13, 1895