Van Cortlandt Park

Jim and I finally made it up to Van Cortlandt Park recently and it was a pretty perfect Sunday adventure. Van Cortlandt Park is in the Bronx, and is the third largest park in the city. In 1888 the Van Cortlandt family sold their land and house to the city, with the speculation that the land become a park and the house a museum.

The first thing we did upon arrival was take a tour of the Van Cortlandt house, the oldest building in the Bronx. The Georgian-style house was built in 1748 and was kept in the family until it was turned over to the city. According to our (very thorough) tour guide, George Washington visited on at least four occasions and the house was used by high-ranking officials on both sides during the Revolutionary War.

If you're at all interested in history or antiques (the "museum" part of the house is a collection of very valuable pieces donated from various sources), I highly recommend a visit to the house. We lucked out on catching a guide, who basically gave us a private tour of the property from top to bottom, but there is always a self-guided option.

After the house tour, we ventured onto a park trail that follows a former rail line. There were a few things I was hoping to check out along the path, and to my delight they were all very close to one another. In fact, only a few steps into the trail, we came across these stone pillars. I actually squealed with delight ("That may be the most excited I've ever seen you," said Jim) which was definitely over dramatic, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

These 13 stones were placed here in the 1910s to test out possible stones with which to build Grand Central Terminal. The idea was to test the durability of different types of stone, although in the end the New York Central Railroad chose Indiana Limestone, which would be the cheapest to transport via their own rail lines.

The trail that we were following is the Putnam Trail which runs along tracks formerly for the Putnam Division of the Central Railroad. There are still some remnants of the trail's previous life, including iron bridges and a really wonderful, rusty skeleton of an old train platform. I love when historical structures are restored and lovingly maintained, but I equally love a good ruin—and any day that includes excellent examples of both is a perfect day.