Willem Beeckman was a Dutch scholar and translator who arrived on these shores in the seventeenth century, when New York was New Amsterdam and Manhattan was the woods. Beeckman rose to prominence in the colony’s government, putting down family roots in the sleepy grasslands on the island’s east side. Eventually, the location of the Beeckman estate evolved into a two-block stretch of cosmopolitan paradise known as Beekman Place. Occupying the blocks between East 49th Street and East 51st Street, just east of First Avenue, it’s one of the loveliest corners …