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The oldest known artifact of European settlement in New York is a coin. It was issued in 1590 by Prince Maurice of Orange, to commemorate his election as a stadtholder of the City of Utrecht; it may have once belonged to a businessman named Augustine Heermans, who in the sixteen-forties had a warehouse on what is now Broad Street; and it was found in 1983 by an archeologist named Joel Grossman while he was digging in the briefly empty lot where Heermans had his warehouse and where the immense Broad Financial Center now stands. (In fact, Heermans came to Manhattan only in 1643, so either the 1590 coin was a kind of Franklin Mint collectible that he carried around with him ...