While New York’s Lower Manhattan is best known as a global financial center, it has been America’s town square since the founding of the city as New Amsterdam in 1624. Virtually every aspect of global, local, national, and local significance can be traced to this downtown stage in some manner. Some aspects have been long forgotten, some have been transformative to our culture, and many have fallen in-between. It Happened Here captures the multiple and overlapping stories that have been woven throughout the 400-year life of New York. It embraces America’s history along with the museums, monuments and memorials that dot its streetscape. It highlights the concerns, events, passions, and places that the people who lived, fought, worked, and visited here found important at their moment in time.

 It Happened Here seeks to excavate its many historical layers: from its inception as the precolonial Lenapehoking territory (once inhabited by the Munsee Lenape and Wappinger tribes), to the creation of New Amsterdam by the Dutch, to the establishment of the first free African settlement in North America, to the establishment of British control, to the gateway for immigration, to being the site of the American Revolution, to its present-day significance as the nation’s cultural and financial nerve-center.

 To kick off the United States’ upcoming 250th birthday and celebrate New York’s 400th Anniversary, It Happened Here is planned for the weekend of July 4, 2025 and will compress the city’s 400 years into 5 days with each day being devoted to a century of the city’s life and history. The program will feature multiple types of activities, including tours, panels, and special events that will take place in many of the sites downtown where highlighted historical events actually occurred, supplemented with additional information and images via our digital “museum without walls” app.  

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