Before New York: Walk & Booksigning

Booksigning: Before New York

12 to 1 p.m.
NYBG Shop

Join Dr. Eric Sanderson for a signing of his new book, BEFORE NEW YORK: The Natural Geography of the City: An Atlas and Gazetteer. This monumental work is the culmination of more than 25 years of research, featuring 75 original maps, 200 color illustrations, and nearly 4,000 detailed descriptions of streams, wetlands, rocks, plants, animals, and Indigenous settlements. An epic expansion of Sanderson’s bestselling and critically acclaimed book Mannahatta, this atlas and gazetteer brings to life the land we now describe as the five boroughs of New York City, revealing what has vanished, what survives, and what could be restored with vision and care.

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Landscapes in Dialogue: A Historical Ecology Walk at NYBG

10:30 a.m.
Meet at the Visitor Center Reflecting Pool

Join NYBG’s Dr. Eric W. Sanderson for a guided walk that traces the Garden’s ecological history and examines how its landscapes have changed over time. Participants will explore key sites that reveal the Bronx’s geologic and ecological origins, learn how past conditions shaped today’s environment, and see firsthand how NYBG is restoring habitats to support a resilient future. Participation is for registrants only.

This event is now at capacity.

Before New York: A Traveling Pop-Up Exhibition

April 25 through November 15

Before New York, there was nature. After New York, there will also be nature. Nature was, is, and forever will be a co-creator of the city we call home. The more closely we align our lives with the ways in which nature operates, the longer our city will endure and the richer and more profound our lives will become.

To see the nature of the place we now call the City of New York, ecologist Dr. Eric W. Sanderson and colleagues have spent more than 25 years reconstructing lives of the inhabitants of this remarkably rich and diverse coastal landscape as it existed on September 12, 1609, on the eve of a visit by the English navigator in Dutch employ, Henry Hudson. We call the landscape that became New York City Welikia, a borrowed word from the Munsee-Lenape language that means “my good home.”

Welikia was exceptionally productive and diverse, providing home to thousands of species and to the Indigenous Lenape people for thousands of years before Hudson arrived. Enter to see the city like you’ve never seen it before, learn about the origins of place, and to appreciate the ways in which we have, do, and can shape our good home.

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