Did you know… “Double Dutch” has a Stuyvesant collection?
You might know that St. Maarten and New York share a joint historical figure in Peter Stuyvesant. This Frisian statesman led a failed siege at Fort Amsterdam in an attempt to seize back St. Maarten from the Spanish. He lost his leg in the process and, nicknamed “Pegleg Pete,” later became governor of New York (then New Amsterdam).
A statue in Port St. Maarten already commemorates this fact for its daily cruise ship visitors. Now, coffeehouse Double Dutch—located only 500 meters, as the crow flies, from where Stuyvesant’s 1644 battle took place—has opened a very special permanent exhibit.
Dozens of history books and schoolbooks about the former New Amsterdam governor can now be read by visitors while enjoying a drink or one of Double Dutch’s sumptuous lunch options. From recent publications to historical works, any visitor interested in Stuyvesant can have a field day here.
If you are staying for a longer time (breakfast or lunch), consider the more serious Stuyvesant biographies in the Double Dutch cupboards. John S. C. Abbott wrote Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam (1873), a widely read 19th-century biography that helped shape the popular image of Stuyvesant as a stern, authoritarian, one-legged governor of New Amsterdam (later New York City). Another important later biographer was Bayard Tuckerman, whose Peter Stuyvesant (1893) was more scholarly and historically critical.
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