Dutch boeren, or farmers, began settling the fertile lowlands southeast of Albany in the mid 1600s, establishing cultural strongholds along the Hudson River and its tributaries. For more than a century after the English takeover of New Netherland in 1664, these settlers maintained their Dutch identity by building homes that reflected their architectural customs and traditional way of life. Built in 1737, the Luykas Van Alen House survived as an example of that resistance to cultural assimilation. Drawing on medieval building methods and housing concepts from Northern Europe, it originally consisted of two rooms and an open garret space, typical of rural dwellings in the Netherlands, before a hallway and third room were added around 1750 as a sign of changing times. By the mid 1700s, greater English influence was reaching the remote Dutch enclaves of the Hudson Valley, and the wider gambrel-style roof replaced the steep gable roof to create space for second-floor bedrooms as new ideas about domestic comfort and privacy altered the Dutch communal lifestyle and marked the beginning of a new cultural era in New York. A distinctive Dutch house featured anchor-bent framing made of load-bearing H-shaped units covered in wood, stone, or brick laid in varying patterns, and often displayed owners' initials or the year of construction on the exterior, as seen in the iron numerals 1737 on the south gable wall of the Luykas Van Alen House. Other characteristic elements included stoops with side benches, split Dutch doors, casement windows, iron hardware such as hinges, locks, shutter keeps, tie rods, and klopperdincks, and steeply pitched roofs with chimneys at each end and gable elbows to direct rainwater away from the house.