1580–1638

Peter Minuit got the world’s best deal in real estate when he bought Manhattan Island from local Indian tribes for about twenty–four dollars in trade goods in 1628. No one could have predicted that in three hundred years the swampy, overgrown island would become the center of the world, almost completely paved over and connected to the mainland by a network of bridges and tunnels. Peter Minuit was also the director–general of the New Netherlands colony, and he helped to facilitate fur shipments for the Dutch East India Company.