Rubble and Revolution: Trinity Church and the Building of New Amsterdam

Leading up to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a first-of-its-kind exhibit brings together words from Trinity’s archive and the paintings of Rembrandt to tell a story about the making of Manhattan.

In the fall of 1776, a great fire laid waste to large swaths of a young New York City. As the ash settled, Trinity parish’s rector, the Reverend Samuel Auchmuty, climbed to the pulpit of St. Paul’s Chapel to address a congregation reeling amid revolution and rubble. The chapel, which sat just a few blocks from the flame-ravaged Trinity Church, had been saved by a bucket brigade; it would house the worshippers for many tumultuous years to come. And now, from May 1 to August 30, 2026, that handwritten sermon, along with a portrait of the man who delivered it, will be on view, at The New York Historical museum. 

Before we meet the Rev. Auchmuty, though, the semiquincentennial exhibit, Old Masters, New Amsterdam, introduces viewers to the small Dutch settlement that gave birth to his diverse congregation. Blending objects from the museum’s own collection, Trinity’s archives, and others, with more than 60 paintings of the Dutch Masters of the 17th century, including Rembrandt van Rijn, the show strives to create a full picture of the city in its early days — from its founding to the Revolutionary War.

With items from when the city was still New Amsterdam, including maps, portraits, and a 1651 deed that granted property to a formerly enslaved African, the show kicks off by steeping visitors in the context of the Dutch settlement’s founding. “It was a tolerant colony, cosmopolitan even then,” says co-curator Russell Shorto, author of The Island at the Center of the World. “There were only 500 people, but 18 languages were spoken.” Of course, it was exploitative, too. Works by the Bohemian artist Wenceslaus Hollar showcase societies, including Native Americans, that were brutalized by colonialism and slavery. 

Above all, though, the show is conceptual, helping visitors to envision daily life in the 17th-century settlement, despite the fact that few visuals from the period exist. So it leans on a collection of portraits, genre scenes, and still lifes from renowned Dutch painters, many of which have never been viewed in New York, to breathe life into the inhabitants who once lived where we do now. “While we had a treasure trove of documents, there were essentially no artists in this new Dutch colony, so we didn’t really know what it looked like,” says Shorto. That is, until it occurred to him that daily life in New Amsterdam likely closely resembled what was simultaneously being portrayed by the revolutionary Dutch masters across the ocean. “In the Netherlands at the time, Rembrandt and his contemporaries were breaking from the tradition of painting popes and kings and turning their sights on ordinary people — street scenes, market scenes, inside taverns,” he says. “They may have never set foot in New Amsterdam, but their depictions provide real insight into the world of Manhattan’s first settlers.” (It is no coincidence that Shorto’s most recent book, Taking Manhattan, theorizes that New York’s distinct character emerged from a melding of Dutch multiethnic capitalism and British imperial power.)

And for Shorto, that 1776 sermon, preached by a loyalist pastor to a congregation of British colonists but also patriots, including members of George Washington’s future cabinet, not to mention free and enslaved people alike, serves as the perfect ending bracket to the exhibit — a bridge between the complex community Lower Manhattan had become by the time he delivered it and how the city would continue to transform in the succeeding years. “The church had been around for 75 years at the time of the fire and Auchmuty’s sermon, and Trinity was where everyone worshiped,” he explains. “New York was a divided place.” And the rector’s words, which explicitly reference the city’s recent physical destruction, also seem to be speaking to the emotional and spiritual upheaval of a community forced to choose sides. For despite the fact that Auchmuty himself would have been feeling torn apart at the idea of an impending break from his beloved Church of England, says Shorto, his focus is on shepherding his mixed flock from ashes and into the future.

“Trinity was the epicenter of so much, and it’s the right postscript to pull the story of a young New York into the next century,” he says. 

“Old Masters, New Amsterdam” will be on view at The New York Historical from May 1 through August 30, 2026.