Twenty thousand years ago, a glacier carved a harbor that would become the most valuable real estate on Earth. This is the story of how an accident of geology set off an accident of history, and how Manhattan became Manhattan.
We begin with the ice. Two miles thick. Grinding south until it stopped at exactly the right place, leaving behind one of the deepest natural harbors on the Atlantic coast. We meet the Lenape, who called this island Mannahatta, “the island of many hills,” and built a civilization that endured for thousands of years. Then come the ships.
In 1626, Peter Minuit supposedly “bought” Manhattan for 60 guilders in trade goods. The Lenape had no concept of land as a commodity. They believed they were granting shared use. The Dutch believed they were acquiring property. Both interpretations collapse under what followed. What really began that year was a commercial experiment so ambitious, so ruthless, and so improvisational that it would eventually remake the world.
This episode traces New York from glacier to Hamilton, from the moment the ice retreated to the morning Aaron Burr’s bullet found its mark in Weehawken. Along the way: the Dutch West India Company’s high-stakes gamble, the enslaved labor that built Wall Street in the most literal sense, the Revolution that nearly broke the city, the Book of Negroes recording thousands who seized a narrow path to freedom, and Washington’s tears at Fraunces Tavern as he said goodbye to the men who made him a legend.
New York was never designed. It was patched together. It was financed by speculation, powered by extraction, and built by people who were denied ownership of their own lives. The city that never sleeps began as a city that never stopped calculating, measuring, trading, and expanding.
A journey through 20,000 years of ice, commerce, slavery, war, and the relentless pursuit of profit that, almost by accident, created the capital of the world.