Van Cortlandt House Museum, ca. 1900.

The three-story Van Cortlandt House was built in 1748 by Jacobus Van Cortlandt's son, Frederick (1699-1749), at the south side of the park. The oldest existing building in the Bronx, it is now a National Historic Landmark.

The Georgian mansion played an important role during the American Revolution: In 1776 Augustus Van Cortlandt (1728-1823), Frederick's son, who had been appointed by the British as city clerk, took the city records out of Manhattan, fearing that they might be destroyed during an evacuation. He first hid them in the mansion and later placed them in one of the family's burial vaults on Vault Hill. When the war ended, Augustus turned the records over to the new government.

During 1874, the same year the area west of the Bronx River was annexed by New York City, talks began about turning the land into a park. The city of New York finally acquired the title to the Van Cortlandt property on December 12, 1888.

The house comprises a number of attractive historic rooms, including a "Dutch chamber" created in 1918 by the Colonial Dames of New York (which runs the museum) to represent what was considered a "typical" 17th-century New Amsterdam room. This room includes a beautiful cupboard (was) and a children's sled (pricker-sledge.) The house also contains many heirlooms donated by descendants of the Van Cortlandts.