Van Cortlandt House Museum

Location: Broadway at West 246th Street
Phone: (718) 543-3344
Description: As New York City’s first historic house museum, Van Cortlandt House contains an outstanding collection of furniture and decorative arts, including many heirlooms donated back to the house by members of the Van Cortlandt family. In 1694, Jacobus Van Cortlandt, a merchant and Mayor of New York (1710-11, 1719-20), purchased the parcel of land that today contains Van Cortlandt Park and the Van Cortlandt House Museum. His son Frederick built the current house, the oldest in the Bronx, in 1748-49. George Washington stayed at the Van Cortlandt House at least twice during the Revolutionary War. Van Cortlandt descendants lived in the House until 1886, when they sold the entire estate to the City of New York for Van Cortlandt Park. In 1896, The National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York restored the House as a museum and operates it to this day.