Cornelis van Werkhoven, who worked for the Dutch West India Company, acquired a huge amount of land from the Nyack Natives in 1652, trading for it with six shirts, two pairs of shoes, six pairs of socks, six hatchets, six knives, scissors and combs. The Dutch called the area Yellow Hook for the color of the clay found there.
Five years later, New Utrecht became one of the original towns of Brooklyn and was named for van Werkhoven’s native home of Utrecht in the Netherlands.
Originally, New Utrecht stretched from the southern tip of Green-Wood Cemetery down to Gravesend Bay and included today’s Bensonhurst, part of Bath Beach, Bay Ridge, Fort Hamilton, Dyker Heights and Borough Park…