Van Cortlandt House Museum

Van Cortlandt House was built in 1748 by Frederick Van Cortlandt, the third generation of this prominent Colonial New York family to have lived on the land.  Frederick Van Cortlandt’s vernacular Georgian house and the surrounding 1,146 acre public park are the property of the City of New York Department of Parks. The operation of Van Cortlandt House is administered by The National Society of The Colonial Dames of America in the State of New York. The Colonial Revival Herb Garden was exhibited at the Horticultural Society of New York’s annual New York Flower Show in the spring of 1992. This garden is still a focal point on the grounds of Van Cortlandt House with its geometric beds of eighteenth-century culinary and medicinal herbs outlined in dwarf boxwood. Other features of the Van Cortlandt House Museum landscape include a pair of specimen horse chestnut trees believed to have been planted by the Van Cortlandt family, a number of commemorative trees, and the remnants of the allée of linden trees which once lined the carriage road in to the house from Broadway.

 

Website: www.vchm.org