It’s my fourth year as a New Yorker, and I am finally coming around to the idea that you don’t have to travel far—or even leave the city—to get a good dose of open green space. Van Cortlandt Park is a hidden gem right in the Bronx.
Maybe I’ve been too stubborn. Having grown up in a small Connecticut town, I was spoiled by the two acres of woods in our backyard, the creek with its footbridge down the street, and the hiking trail at the end of our driveway. I figured, then, that nature must be sought outside the five boroughs, with a couple-hour drive upstate or across state lines. But New York City, I’ve come to learn, has more to offer in the way of parks than a patch of grass and a swing set (which, don’t get me wrong, are necessary in their own right).
This sentiment was at the forefront of my mind when my friend suggested we spend a late-October Sunday in Central Park, basking in the autumn foliage. Central Park is beautiful, of course, but I had my sights set elsewhere. Gently, I countered: how about we take a trip to the Bronx? Had he heard of Van Cortlandt Park?
My interest in Van Cortlandt Park was manifold. First, I am a city-dweller who loves the outdoors and greatly misses the woods of her hometown. Second, I am drawn to places with compelling histories—and Van Cortlandt Park has that, in abundance. And, finally, I am ever-curious about so-called hidden gems. The park had been on my radar for some time.
Located in the northwest Bronx and spanning an impressive 1,146 acres, Van Cortlandt Park is New York City’s third largest park. The first and second largest parks are Pelham Bay Park (2,765 acres) and Staten Island’s Greenbelt (1,778 acres), respectively. Central Park sits in fifth place at 843 acres.
Beyond its impressive acreage and expected attractions (athletic fields, two miles of shaded hiking trails, etc.), Van Cortlandt Park boasts a seasonally-open outdoor pool, horseback riding trails, and the oldest public golf course in the United States, to name a few. Plus, there is the Van Cortlandt House Museum, the nature center, and an abundance of events and programs offered by the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance. I was thrilled when my “let’s visit the Bronx” suggestion was met with enthusiasm.
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Van Cortlandt Park: A Brief History
Of course, the land comprising Van Cortlandt Park existed long before it became a public park. It existed long before the Van Cortlandts, a wealthy and politically influential family of Dutch origin, owned the land from the late 17th century through the end of the 19th century.
The park’s natural topography—its distinct ridges, hillsides, and flats—were formed twenty-thousand years ago when the glaciers that covered what is now New York receded. Another seven-thousand years passed before Indigenous Americans came to the area, and by 1000 AD the Lenape had built permanent settlements there. They lived on the land until 1639, when the Dutch East India Company brought the first Europeans to settle the Bronx.
To summarize a complicated history, Jacobus Van Cortlandt, a wealthy merchant and two-time New York City mayor, acquired the land in 1864. Jacobus and his descendants owned the land for generations, largely as a working plantation where they enslaved Africans and a number of Indigenous people. In 1888, with the help of the New York Parks Association, the City of New York acquired an unprecedented 4,000 acres of parkland in the Bronx, including what would, in 1913, officially be named Van Cortlandt Park.
As my visit would soon reveal, the often-fraught history of the land is on full display. Informational plaques, part of NYC Park’s Historical Signs Project, are placed throughout the park, educating parkgoers on the historical significance of what might otherwise be mistaken for a miscellaneous plot of land or a random stone. Among efforts to reclaim and recontextualize history, the Enslaved People Project is engaged in several initiatives to educate the public, including developing educational material and running community workshops.
Visiting Van Cortlandt
The day of the park trip arrived. I had read up on some of the park history, and knew I wanted to tour the historic house and walk some of the hiking trails. But beyond that, planning was minimal. I figured I would show up and see what enticed me.
My friend and I traveled by car, a 35-minute drive from North Brooklyn, and easily found a parking spot in the free lot by the Van Cortlandt Golf Course. New Yorkers who don’t have access to a car don’t need to fret. The park is also accessible by bus and subway.
It was early afternoon when we entered the park. The temperature hung in the mid-fifties, and the sky was blue and almost entirely clear. My first impression: amazement at the expansiveness of the park’s fields. Historically used for agriculture, today the fields are filled with jersey-clad kids kicking soccer balls into goals and park visitors strolling with dogs, pausing to take photos of the trees dotting the fields.
Van Cortlandt House Museum
Our first stop: Van Cortlandt House Museum. The house is made of brick and stone and sits two-stories tall, plus an attic with dormer windows. There is an herb garden, too.
It was built by enslaved Africans in 1748 – 1749, under the supervision of Frederick Van Cortlandt, Jacobus’ son. After the City of New York acquired the land and the house in the late 19th century, the National Society of Colonial Dames restored it, complete with furnishings that showcase what it might have looked like from 1749 – 1820.
The house is open for self-guided tours Wednesday through Sunday, 11 AM through 4 PM, with 3:30 as the latest arrival time. For most adults, admission is $5, although there are exceptions for Bronx residents and children, among others. The day of our visit coincided with an event, Wags to Witches. Fortunately, that meant a lot of costumed dogs wandering around excitedly. Unfortunately, that meant museum staff were preoccupied and the second and third floors of the house were closed for the day.
While I was disappointed to not have full access to the house, the three rooms on the first floor offered a good glimpse into the Van Cortlandt’s home. The light-flooded East Parlor was the most formal room of the house where the Van Cortlandts entertained their most wealthy, elite friends: the Rennsalears, the Delanceys, the Astors, and so on. “All the families who have streets named after them,” my friend remarked.
As a fan of bright colors, I was particularly fond of the West Parlor. Its north wall is painted blue and orange and features a fireplace and built-in cabinets, their doors open to reveal delicate china. As the sign indicates, the blue and orange were actually the original colors of the wall, as revealed by microscopic paint chip analysis—a fascinating glimpse into the restoration process.
The last room we visited was the Dining Room. The area was a bit crowded, making it difficult to get a good photo. (Luckily, the museum website can bridge that gap.) I was particularly fond of the blue wallpaper here and fascinated to learn that it is a reproduction of wallpaper from around 1820, discovered during the restoration process.
While I lamented the fact that I couldn’t climb the stairs to the upper levels, as well as the barriers that kept visitors from wandering freely through the rooms and examining the artifacts up close, the house museum was a unique, educational, and aesthetically interesting introduction to the park, and an experience I wholeheartedly recommend.
Nature Trails
While much of Van Cortlandt Park is comprised of open fields, it boasts a handful of hiking trails, too. We spent most of our time on the Cross Country Trail, veering off to wander smaller trails in the Northwest Forest.
If you’re looking for a challenging hike filled with unrelenting inclines and rugged landscapes, this is not your place. But for a New York City park, the trails surpassed my expectations. They are beautiful and relatively quiet, and we stopped in several spots to admire a uniquely shaped tree branch or climb a fallen trunk. In many parts, the trees grow thick enough and the foot traffic is scarce enough that I forgot I was, in fact, in the Bronx.
The highlight of the hike: the Vault Hill Overlook. We climbed over the rocks and sat for nearly an hour in the sunshine, gazing at the Manhattan skyline, the George Washington Bridge, and the park’s Parade Ground below.
There were a handful of people around, scattered across the rocks. Like everyone else we’d encountered, they were respectful, friendly, and kept to themselves. That was my general impression of the Van Cortlandt parkgoers: they’d offer a nod or a smile and be on their way.
Burial Grounds
As I mentioned, and as the signs throughout the house museum reinforce, the park does not shy away from the truth: the Van Cortlandts were slave owners, and this land was once a plantation. Crucial acknowledgements of the African and Indigenous people who worked, lived, and died on the land are abundant.
One such site is the Enslaved African Burial Ground, which sits not far from the house. In present day, the burial ground is a fenced-in plot of land, filled with trees and covered in leaves. We pause to read the sign and engage in a friendly staring contest with a squirrel, intently munching on an acorn.
There aren’t many people around us; the park feels quiet and still. I am overcome with the strangeness of being in a place so beautiful but whose history is steeped in racial violence. I consider that this is the case for many beautiful places in America, except there aren’t carefully researched signs to point it out.
Researchers discovered the burial ground (where both African and Indigenous people were buried) through the use of primary documents such as wills, land deeds, and estate inventories, as well as accounts from workers who discovered skeletal remains in the 1870s. In 2019, these findings were corroborated by a USDA geophysical study that used ground-penetrating radar.
Notably, this burial ground sits along the eastern edge of the Kingsbridge Burial Ground, where some of the area’s earliest colonial settlers were buried until the early 19th century.
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Our third encounter with a burial ground came as we meandered along the Cross Country Trail. This cemetery sits atop Vault Hill and was the burial site of many Van Cortlandt family members until 1888, when the land became a public park. The vault is square, smaller than I’d expect, and made of a tall stone wall and iron fence with an ornate gate, which is locked. The plot is fairly overgrown and, without the signs indicating otherwise, the stone walls might be mistaken for any old abandoned structure.
We pause to read and learn that the grounds were vandalized in the 1960s, and the headstones and markers were removed. I wonder aloud what it looked like before.
It is here that I learn the park’s significance during the Revolutionary War. During a visit to his ailing mother, City Clerk Augustus Van Cortlandt used the family vault to successfully hide city records from the British before they occupied New York. Later, he safely retrieved them.
Later research revealed that George Washington allegedly instructed campfires to be lit on Vault Hill in order to trick the British into believing that the army was still present, when they had actually decamped in Yorktown.
Revolutionary War buffs, I have found the park for you!
Thirteen Stone Pillars
As we walked away from Vault Hill, we ran into three park rangers. Dusk had snuck up on us, and we were quickly running out of sunlight so we asked for their advice. What’s one more place we could swing by, before we drove back to Brooklyn? They were friendly, enthusiastic, and happy to chat. One offered up a suggestion: the Thirteen Stone Pillars. It was a quick walk away, toward the parking lot, and we could make it before the sun set.
The Thirteen Stone Pillars are just that: thirteen stone pillars, standing just off what was once part of the Putnam Branch of the New York Central Railroad and is now a nature trail.
As is the case with the rest of the park, though, these stones have history.
In 1905, the New York Central Railroad placed fifteen stones (thirteen of which remain) on the parkland in order to measure how various granite, limestone, and marble samples would fare during the winter months. Grand Central Terminal was under construction, and the railroad and its architects were deciding what type of stone to use for the exterior curtain wall of the head house. I’ll spoil it for you. The winners were the Indiana limestone (second stone from the left) and the Stony Creek granite (most likely, the third from the right).
We walked among the pillars, running our hands over the cold stone and appreciating how firmly planted in the ground they remained, over a century later.
The sun had almost set by then, and we made our way back to the car and back to Brooklyn.
My Parting Thoughts
I will be visiting Van Cortlandt Park again, and I think you should, too. In particular, the park offers something special to NYC residents in search of wooded trails and open spaces, as well as people who are interested in learning the history of the land on which they walk, run, hike, and even golf or swim.
Next time, I’d like to visit the second and third floors of the Van Cortlandt House Museum. I’d like to stop by the Nature Center and take advantage of a walking tour. I’d like to get to the area early enough to grab breakfast at The Irish Coffee Shop nearby, a recommendation from a friend who grew up in the neighborhood.
In the weeks after my visit, and in the process of writing this, I’ve found myself increasingly reflecting on the complex history of the land in relation to the straightforward beauty I witnessed and joy I experienced during my visit. I have, too, found myself increasingly interested in learning more, so that I might return to the park more knowledgeable. I wonder how that will inform my experience.
A park is a place for recreation, for enjoyment of nature, for stillness and solitude. A park is, too, a place for remembrance, reclamation, and community-building. Sometimes, you find all that in one place, hidden in plain sight, on a thousand acres in the Bronx.
All photos courtesy of the author unless otherwise noted. Top photo vancortlandtlakehouse.com.
