The architecture of Manhattan has greatly varied in the different periods of its history. As in all new settlements where timber abounds, the first buildings were constructed of logs. Indeed, nothing else appears to have been employed until 1647, when the first stone house was finished, an event of such transcendent importance, that the generous Dutch celebrated it by drinking one hundred and twenty-eight gallons of liquor on the occasion. During the first forty years after the settlement of Manhattan, the old Holland style of architecture entirely prevailed. Some of these buildings had narrow foundations, with high peaked roofs; others were broader at their base, one, and sometimes two stories high; the gables, which always faced the streets, were sometimes of brick, but oftener of shingles rounded at the end. Many of the roofs were bevelled, projecting at the eaves sufficiently to shelter a small regiment of troops. The gutters of many of the houses extended to near the centre of the streets, to the great annoyance of travelers in rainy weather. The front entrance was usually ornamented with a high wooden porch called a stoop, where the women spent the shady part of the day. The more important buildings such as the "Stuyvesant Huys," near the water edge, now Moore and Front streets, and the "Stadt-Huys" or City Hall, on Pearl street, were set in the foreground, to be more readily seen from the river and bay. The first buildings erected on Wall street were block-houses.

But if this Holland style lacked elegance, it possessed the merit of durability. One in a fine state of preservation taken down in 1827, was marked 1698, and many after standing more than one hundred years showed no signs of decay. The last of these Knickerbockers has now disappeared from Manhattan, though they still linger on Long Island, and up the Hudson. The English conquest introduced a greater variety, which has continued to change and multiply its forms until the present time. As early as 1670, stone and brick were principally employed; iron, so extensively used at present, has been introduced daring the last thirty years. A builder in Water street, about the beginning of the Revolution, exchanged leaden sash for wooden, a novelty too great for the times, for the trustees of Trinity after the great fire of 1778 still retained the leaden frame.

The architecture at present may be said to be thoroughly eclectic, as nearly every style known to the student may be found, several at times blending, in the same edifice. Trinity church on Broadway, is of the Gothic; St. George''s in Stuyvesant square, of the Byzantine; St. Paul''s Methodist Episcopal, on Fourth avenue, is of the Romanesque; the City Hall is of the Italian; the Tombs of the Egyptian; while the Synagogues present the Moresque, and the distinctive form of the Hebrew style.