The story begins with Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch settler who bought the land from the Dutch West India Company in 1646. Van der Donck died in 1655, and the property changed hands multiple times before Jacobus Van Cortlandt acquired it in the 1690s. Jacobus dammed Tibbetts Brook to create Van Cortlandt Lake, powering a sawmill and later a gristmill, and used the waterways to ship grain and timber south to the Harlem River. The estate was a working plantation -- several enslaved people labored there alongside hired hands. When Frederick inherited the property in 1739, the site was considered part of lower Yonkers in Westchester County. He built the mansion on the eastern slope of the hills above the brook, with a stone driveway designed so occupants could hear visitors approaching before they arrived.

During the American Revolutionary War, the Van Cortlandt House became a prize that neither side could afford to leave unoccupied. British General William Howe made it his headquarters in November 1776, and it passed back and forth between the two armies as the front lines shifted. Washington used the house in 1781 to plan strategy with the Comte de Rochambeau, while their troops camped on the grounds outside -- the flat expanse now known as the Parade Ground. In a famous deception, Washington lit campfires outside the mansion to convince the British that his forces remained in position, then marched south toward Yorktown. The house's second-floor western bedroom is still called the Washington bedroom, furnished with pieces said to date from his time there, including his bed and a mahogany footrest.

Governor Grover Cleveland signed the New Parks Act in 1884, authorizing the city to acquire 700 acres of the Van Cortlandt estate. The family vacated the house in 1888, and for several years its most notable occupants were the New York State Police officers assigned to guard the bison that roamed the newly created Van Cortlandt Park. In 1896, the Society of Colonial Dames of the State of New York leased the mansion and began a renovation costing between $4,000 and $5,000. On May 28, 1897, the Van Cortlandt House Museum opened to the public -- one of the first historic house museums in New York City, predating the better-known Morris-Jumel Mansion and Dyckman House as public institutions. By the early 1930s, it was drawing 50,000 to 60,000 visitors a year.

The architecture rewards close attention. The L-shaped house has a largely plain facade, except for its most distinctive feature: brick keystones above the windows carved to depict the faces of Van Cortlandt family members. Inside, the basement kitchen has low hand-hewn cypress and cedar beams and small windows near the ceiling that may have served as defensive loopholes. The western parlor's fireplace is flanked by arched cupboards with paneled doors, and upstairs, a northeast bedroom has a fireplace surrounded by allegorical Dutch tiles. The house became a New York City landmark in 1966, was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1967, and achieved National Historic Landmark status in 1976. Its interiors received separate landmark protection in 1975 -- a recognition that what survives inside these walls is as significant as the walls themselves.