Van Cortlandt Park

Large public park in the Bronx, New York

Van Cortlandt Park is a park located in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. Owned by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, it is managed with assistance from the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance. The park, the city's third largest, was named for the Van Cortlandt family, which was prominent in the area during the Dutch and English colonial periods. Van Cortlandt Park's sports facilities include golf courses and several miles of paths for running, as well as facilities for baseball, basketball, cricket, cross country running, football, horseback riding, lacrosse, rugby, soccer, softball, swimming, tennis and track and field. The park also contains five major hiking trails and other walking trails. Its natural features include Tibbetts Brook; Van Cortlandt Lake, the largest freshwater lake in the Bronx; old growth forests; and outcrops of Fordham gneiss and Inwood marble. Contained within the park is the Van Cortlandt House, the oldest known surviving house in the Bronx, and the Van Cortlandt Golf Course, the oldest public golf course in the country. The land that Van Cortlandt Park now occupies was purchased by Jacobus Van Cortlandt from John Barrett around 1691. His son Frederick built the Van Cortlandt House on the property, but died before its completion. Later, the land was used during the Revolutionary War when the Stockbridge militia was destroyed by the Queen's Rangers. In 1888, the family property was sold to the City of New York and made into a public parkland. The Van Cortlandt House, later designated as a historic landmark, was converted into a public museum, and new paths were created across the property to make it more passable. In the 1930s, the Robert Moses–directed construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway and Mosholu Parkway fragmented Van Cortlandt Park into its six discontinuous pieces. The last remaining freshwater marsh in New York State, Tibbetts Brook, was dredged and landscaped to accommodate construction, causing large scale ecological disruption within the park. The 1975 New York City fiscal crisis caused much of the park to fall into disrepair. Gradual improvements began taking place from the late 1980s on including the addition of new pathways, signage, and security. In 2014, the "Van Cortlandt Park Master Plan 2034" was published.

The forest in what is now Van Cortlandt Park has been around for 17,000 years, since the end of the Wisconsin glaciation. The Wiechquaskeck, a Wappinger people, were among the first recorded people to inhabit in the area now referred to as Van Cortlandt Park. They settled in the area around the 14th or 15th centuries. The Lenapes used the geographic features of the area to support their community; for instance, they used the Tibbetts Brook, Spuyten Duyvil Creek, or Hudson River for fishing, and flatland areas for farming. They formed a village named Keskeskick, whose name roughly translates to "sharp grass or sedge marsh" in the Unami language. The strip of land on the Hudson River's east bank, between the current day Spuyten Duyvil Creek and Yonkers, was sold to the Dutch West India Company in the early 17th century. Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutch settler, bought the land from the company in 1646. Van der Donck also paid the Indian chief Tacharew, whose tribe used to live on the land, as a friendly gesture. He named the land "Colen Donck" and built a house upon the land. The house was built between current day Van Cortlandt Lake and Broadway. It faced south, probably because this was the location of a natural marshland. What is now the parade ground was used by van der Donck for farming. Van der Donck died in 1655. That year the Munsee bands that lived in the lower Hudson River valley briefly occupied New Amsterdam and attacked Pavonia and Staten Island during what is known as the Peach War. This forced the settlers, including van der Donck's widow, to flee to Manhattan. Following the takeover of the New Netherland colony by the British in 1664, the claim to the estate was awarded to Hugh O'Neale, the new husband of van der Donck's widow. Because the O'Neales lived far away from the land, the claim was awarded to O'Neale's brother in law and van der Donck's widow's brother, Elias Doughty, who proceeded to sell off the portions of the property. This property included the modern park parade grounds. Next, Doughty sold a tract of land, including the current site of the Van Cortlandt House, to Frederick Philipse, Thomas Delavall, and Thomas Lewis. Philipse bought out Delavall's and Lewis's land shares, making the land part of the Philipsburg Manor, which extended from Spuyten Duyvil Creek to the Croton River in modern Westchester County. Philipse's wife died, and he remarried Olof Stevense Van Cortlandt's daughter, herself a widow. Philipse's daughter Eva later married Jacobus Van Cortlandt, who was Mrs. Philipse's brother. The land that Van Cortlandt Park now occupies was acquired by Van Cortlandt from Philipse in the mid to late 1690s. In 1699, Van Cortlandt dammed Tibbetts Brook in order to power a sawmill (and later, a gristmill,), creating Van Cortlandt Lake as a mill pond in the process. In 1732, Van Cortlandt acquired an additional parcel from the Tippett family. The estate was then passed on to Jacobus's son Frederick Van Cortlandt (1699–1749) and family in 1739; it was once a vast grain plantation. In 1748, Frederick built the Van Cortlandt House on the former Tippett property, but died before its completion. The Van Cortlandts did not primarily live in that house, instead staying in Manhattan most of the time. A family burial ground was created in 1749, later to be known as "Vault Hill." Frederick, who was buried in Vault Hill, British General William Howe made the house his headquarters on November 13, 1776, thus placing it behind British held ground. The house itself was Washington's headquarters after his troops were defeated in the 1776 Battle of Long Island. In 1781, Washington returned to the house to strategize with Rochambeau while their troops waited outside on what is now the Parade Ground and Vault Hill. He later lit campfires outside the house to deceive the British into thinking that his troops were still on the grounds. Douglass made estimates for the new aqueduct in 1833–1834 and John Martineau performed a separate study in 1834. Both found the proposed route, which ran through the present day park, to be okay. The project was built by 3,000–4,000 laborers who completed the entire aqueduct in five years. The old aqueduct was supplemented by the New Croton Aqueduct in 1890, which also ran through the park. The Old Croton Aqueduct was in use until 1955, though the part that ran through the park was closed down in 1897 after the new aqueduct was connected to the Jerome Park Reservoir.

In 1876, Frederick Law Olmsted was hired to survey the Bronx and map out streets based on the local geography. Olmsted noted the natural beauty of the Van Cortlandt estate, comparing it to Central Park which he designed, and recommended the city purchase the property. Around the same time, New York Herald editor John Mullaly pushed for the creation of parks in New York City, particularly lauding the Van Cortlandt and Pell families' properties in the western and eastern Bronx respectively. He formed the New York Park Association in November 1881. There were objections to the system, which would apparently be too far from Manhattan, in addition to precluding development on the site. However, newspapers and prominent lobbyists, who supported such a park system, were able to petition the bill into the New York State Senate, and later, the New York State Assembly (the legislature's lower house). In June 1884, Governor Grover Cleveland signed the New Parks Act into law, authorizing the creation of the park system. Legal disputes carried on for years, exacerbated by the fact that Luther R. Marsh, vice president of the New York Park Association, owned land near Van Cortlandt Park in particular. Opponents argued that building a park system would divert funds from more important infrastructure like schools and docks; that everyone in the city, instead of just the property owners near the proposed park, was required to pay taxes to pay for the parks' construction; and that since Marsh was trying to parcel off some of his land to developers, the park's size should be reduced in order to prevent him from profiting off park usage. However, most of this opposition was directed at the construction of Pelham Bay Park, which was then in Westchester. Supporters argued that the parks were for the benefit of all the city's citizens, thus justifying the citywide park tax; that the value of properties near the parks would appreciate greatly over time; that the commission had only chosen property that could easily be converted into a park; and that Pelham Bay Park would soon be annexed to the city. Ultimately, the parks were established despite the objections of major figures like Mayors William Russell Grace and Abram Hewitt; Comptroller Edward V. Loew; and Assemblymen Henry Bergh and Theodore Roosevelt. In 1880 while the new park was being planned, the New York City & Northern Railroad, later the New York and Putnam Railroad, was built through the center of the park. It had two stops in the Bronx: one inside the park, and another to the south at Kingsbridge. South of Kingsbridge, the railroad merged with the present day Hudson Line of the Metro North Railroad. The Parade Ground was immediately used by the National Guard for brigade practice, replacing the parade ground of Prospect Park. The ground received unspecified "improvements" in 1893–1894. With the city's approval, particularly overgrown areas of the property were made passable. Wide walking paths were built over original walkways, including the thin paths that led to the Van Cortlandt family cemetery, high on the nearby bluffs. "Certain lands" around the house were then filled in for the purpose of creating a "Colonial Garden," which was proposed in 1897. During excavation of the grounds, Indian artifacts and graves were found, corresponding to the old village of Keskeskick. The nine hole Van Cortlandt Golf Course opened on July 6, 1895, as the country's first and oldest public golf course. The course comprised current holes 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 12, 13, and 14. The first eight holes were easier and less than apart, but the last one had a fairway in length. The ninth hole, which spanned two stone walls and two small brooks, was among the country's hardest holes. Four years after the course opened, the city hired Tom Bendelow, nicknamed the "Johnny Appleseed of Golf", to expand it to 18 holes. where they stayed until they were shipped to prairie land in Oklahoma later that year. The Colonial Garden, designed by landscape architect Samuel Parsons, started construction in 1902 and opened the following June. Besides plants, the garden had rustic wooden bridges and wooden stairs and a "handsome fountain and central court." A "Shakespeare Garden" was also opened that year, with a grand stairway leading down to it. The next year, park officials realized that the Colonial Garden's construction was of poor quality and hard to cultivate. The garden had to be raised 3.5 feet (1 m), and a nursery needed to be built to transport the plants during the garden's reconstruction. The rustic wooden bridges were to be replaced with stone bridges, while the wooden stairs were to be superseded by stone stairs. Not only did many plants die during the process, but the actual rebuilding was delayed until 1911. Two years later, the Parks Commissioner for the Bronx refused to allocate reconstruction funds because, he stated, the garden looked just fine. Under threat of tearing the garden down, the city had to find money to fill and drain the ground. The rebuilding contract was awarded in 1909 and completed by 1911.

Various adjustments were made over succeeding years. A network of roads through the park was built soon after, allowing the construction of picnic areas and hiking trails as well as making the forests more accessible to visitors. A stone memorial was placed at Indian Field in 1906, The marshlands were filled in between 1906 and 1922. The marsh to the southwest of the Van Cortlandt Station was converted to a lake. An "outlet sewer" under Broadway was built in 1907. From 1903 to 1911, NYC Parks cleaned the 13 feet (4 m) Van Cortlandt Lake, removed the original earthen dam, and emptied the lake in order to dredge the lake bed to a lower depth. A new dam was installed to reform the lake. The former marshland was filled in. During a 1910s excavation for a sewer pipe, stones were unearthed that were suspected to be from the old van der Donck estate. During World War I, the Parade Ground was used to train soldiers. However, during and following World War I, the Parade Ground was used for war training. Until 1926, the baseball fields did not contain backstops, and had to be vacated by July 4 of every year, so the National Guard could use the field. The 6.2 mile (10 km) cross country running course was inaugurated in 1914. The track started out as a flat path, became hilly, turned onto a "little spell of road work," went into the forest, and crossed a water before turning back. A year later, it hosted the Metropolitan Association of the Amateur Athletic Union's Junior and Senior Cross Country championships. A modified 3.1 mile (5 km) cross country course opened on November 5, 1921, with runners simply changing direction at the city border. The new course, which started at the original polo fields, did not conflict with either of the golf courses. In 1922, there was a proposal to acquire land for the future Saw Mill River Parkway, which would connect the park to of open space in Westchester when completed. Through the 1930s, the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation kept adding new recreational facilities in the park. The Colonial and Shakespeare Gardens had a combined 250,000 flowers by 1931, but both were demolished by the end of the decade due to bad drainage. In 1934, Robert Moses became the New York City Parks Commissioner, and during his 16 year tenure as commissioner, altered almost every aspect of the park. His job partially entailed balancing the needs of area residents, whose numbers had grown in the past decade, with transit users who traveled to the park from the north and south. Moses's development plans in the 1930s called for the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway and Mosholu Parkway to bisect Van Cortlandt Park and meet at a trumpet interchange about half a mile north of the center, merging into the Saw Mill River Parkway. Due to objections over the construction of roads inside the park, the width of the parkways' lanes was reduced. Tibbetts Brook was dredged and landscaped in 1938 to accommodate construction. Such construction continued until 1955, during which the Major Deegan Expressway (current Interstate 87) was also built, bisecting the Mosholu Parkway. This conflicted with Moses's plans for the park as a "rural oasis", as highway construction ultimately separated the park into six pieces and demolished most of the remaining marsh in the park. This construction also induced siltation of the brook, leading to further creation of marshes. Moses also made improvements to the park itself, building new walkways, paving dirt roads, creating playgrounds, and installing lights. Baseball, soccer, and cricket fields were added in 1938. The Van Cortlandt Stadium was added in 1939 on the site of a former swamp, and a pool followed in 1970. Moses also landscaped the areas near the Woodlawn and 242nd Street subway stations to attract park visitors from other neighborhoods. During his tenure as Parks Commissioner, Moses took aggressive approach to preserving the park's quality. For instance, six mothers were issued court summonses in 1942 after letting their children dig in the park, and two airplane pilots were fined in 1947 for unauthorized airplane landings. Around 1939, the old aqueduct, which was now a popular hiking trail, started becoming a popular route with cyclists. Soon after, there was a proposal to redevelop the trail as a bike path. This proposal never came to fruition, although in the mid 1970s, the city built a separate bike path along Mosholu Parkway, the Bronx River Parkway, and Pelham Parkway between Jerome Avenue and Pelham Bay Park.

By the 1960s, large portions of the park, such as Tibbetts Brook, were being polluted by human activity; in addition, the brook now flowed into the Broadway sewer at the south end of Van Cortlandt Lake. Pollution from upstream and the highways, and spillover of chemicals used in the golf course, killed fish in the lake. This problem was first noticed in May 1961 when thousands of dead bass, pickerel, catfish, perch, and carp floated up at the edge of the lake. The mass death of fish was blamed on siltation, Three years later, fish were still being killed by siltation. City investigators took water samples from the lake and found that they contained large amounts of weeds and sediment. About of the lake's surface area was being lost to sedimentation every year. In addition, an algal bloom caused the lake to be in a low oxygen condition, endangering plants and animals in and around the lake. The seasonal ski slope was closed in the late 1960s when the city decided to allow golfers to use the Van Cortlandt Course during winters. Also in the late 1960s, the city decided to build a series of public pools on the site of the Colonial Garden, consisting of a diving, a swimming, and a wading pool. Construction on the $1.5 million pools started in early 1969 and was completed by 1970. Because of the swampy nature of the ground underneath it, the pools soon began to crackle and set. By 1979, the locker rooms were heavily vandalized and the diving pool had been closed. The city's fiscal crisis in the 1970s caused the rest of the park to fall into disrepair. A dearth of funds exacerbated the pollution of the park. Hands on education programs at the park were reduced to passive observations of flora and fauna. A year later, a private landscaping firm estimated that it would cost $4–7 million to restore the Van Cortlandt Lake. By this point, the lake was so dirty that a small boat could not float on it, even though the lake was 15 feet (5 m) deep. Catfish were the only fish that could survive in the lake water. The city of Yonkers eventually attributed the cause of the Van Cortlandt Lake's pollution to four storm sewers that were found to be illegally connected to Tibbetts Brook upstream. The utter disrepair in the park prompted some informal rules at the park's golf courses. For instance, the Los Angeles Times noted that "a player was allowed to drop his ball a club length away if it rolled up against an abandoned auto, or, in one case, a boat. To thwart robbers, besieged golfers quit playing in traditional foursomes and instead ventured forth in football team sized units. Some players added an extra club—a night stick—or tucked tear gas spray into their golf bags." Years later, one writer recalled that dozens of the course's trees died, and "flagsticks were reduced to broken bamboo poles stuck into the ground." Weeds overgrew the course, and golfers would wear long sleeved shirts to ward off against the city's insufficient mosquito repellents. Homeless squatters moved into the park, while courses fell into disrepair, replaced by dirt tracks and "huts and forts" built by neighborhood kids. A lack of annual maintenance of the park's jogging tracks and bridle paths had caused them to erode and become overgrown at some places. In 1978–1979, NYC Parks performed a wholesale renovation of the park's eroded and dilapidated bridle paths and jogging tracks. The Parade Ground remained popular, and the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera performed in the field during the summer. However, it too had deteriorated because of intensive use: the grounds' topsoil had eroded away and the sidewalks started to buckle. In 1978, the Perrier Company donated a fitness trail consisting of 12 exercise machines to the park; there were originally supposed to be 18 machines, but the extra six machines were deemed unnecessary. Two shuffleboard courts were also installed in the Parade Grounds the same year, but went unused because of a lack of playing equipment.

In response to studies and accounts that showed the bad condition of the lake, the state restored the fish population of the lake in 1978. The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park soon came up with its own suggestions to improve the park. After the parcourse for the parade grounds was approved in 1978, the New York City Department of Parks promised to cooperate on the Van Cortlandt Park improvement plans. Since then, there have been seven plans for restoring natural elements of the park, as well as three plans for park restoration. Gradual improvements began taking place in the late 1980s, including the addition of new pathways, signage, and security, as well as the restoration of playgrounds and other recreational facilities. In January 1988, NYC Parks conducted a study to determine the specific elements of the park that needed restoration. Highway structures were also reconfigured to clean runoff from these structures. An excavation in the 1990s yielded over 2,500 artifacts. A set of tennis courts were proposed within the park east of the Van Cortlandt House in the 1990s; despite concerns from preservationists, though the courts were approved. The city built the Croton Water Filtration Plant, a drinking water treatment facility, under the park's Mosholu Golf Course. Plant operations began in 2015. The plant was needed in order to filter contaminants from urban runoff pollution in the Croton River watershed and protect the public from Giardia and Cryptosporidium, microorganisms which can cause serious health problems. The Croton plant was built after a lawsuit was filed in 1997 against the city by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U. S. Department of Justice and the State of New York. The city settled the suit and a consent decree was issued with the condition that the city would build the plant by 2006. The project experienced delays and ballooning costs due to objections from the local community, which required the city to propose alternate sites for the plant. The plant was built 160 feet (49 m) below the Mosholu Golf Course, at a cost of $3.2 billion. The Sachkerah Woods Playground, located at the park's southeast corner near the Mosholu Golf Course, was also built using Croton mitigation funds. As part of the "Van Cortlandt Park Master Plan 2034", critical ecological elements of the park, such as the forest, the rural landscape, and Tibbetts Brook, would be restored, and the brook would be diverted. as of March 2014 when the report was written, the lack of natural drainage points within Van Cortlandt Park led to the flooding of recreational areas within the park during heavy rains. The park's paths would also be restored with the addition of three new pedestrian bridges; a playground; four activity centers, of which two would be outdoors and two would be indoors; a skate park; an athletic field; and three basketball courts built within the park. "Comfort stations" and food concessions would also be added. The Van Cortlandt Golf Course was renovated in 2016. The skate park, new playground, and path improvements were completed in 2020. NYC Parks started renovating the Woodlawn Playground in 2021 for $1 million. One of the pedestrian bridges, which would have crossed the Major Deegan Expressway, was postponed in 2020 after its cost had increased to $23 million; the bridge was canceled in 2023.

At , Van Cortlandt Park is the third largest park in New York City,efn|name=size|It has also been described as being the fourth largest park at , if Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens was counted at However, a resurveying in 2013 concluded that Van Cortlandt Park was 1,146 acres, while Flushing Meadows–Corona Park was calculated at a smaller It has numerous attractions and features that are both recreational and educational.

The different parts of Van Cortlandt Park have a varied geology. The Northwest Woods and Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway have a steep terrain dotted with Fordham gneiss, a metamorphic rock that is very hard to weather. The Tibbetts Brook valley is set in Inwood marble, which weathers more easily. The east side of the park near Indian Field contains Yonkers granite, an igneous rock that mixed with Fordham gneiss as a hot magma before later cooling.

Van Cortlandt Park contains the Bronx's largest freshwater lake, the eponymous Van Cortlandt Lake. The lake is used for recreational fishing, as it includes species such as largemouth bass, black crappie, brown bullhead, bluegill, pumpkinseed, golden shiner, common carp, white sucker, and yellow perch. It is fed by Tibbetts Brook, a stream originating in Yonkers, which runs through a series of culverts before draining into the south edge of the lake at approximately West 242nd Street. There are efforts to daylight this south end into the former New York and Putnam Railroad right of way that runs through the park as part of the park's faster plan. There is no surviving documentation for the creation of Van Cortlandt Lake. In 1699, Jacobus Van Cortlandt dammed Tibbetts Brook to power a sawmill, creating a mill pond at the site where the lake is. and the infill proposal was funded by the New York City Board of Estimate in 1899. Subsequently, the Parks Department proposed to dredge the swamp and create a lake in its stead, but despite this plan receiving $70,000 in funding in 1906, it was deemed "not feasible" to drain the swamp directly into the Broadway sewer. Another plan to remove the swamps in the park's southwest was approved in 1904. The plan was to build an athletic field in the southwest swamp's place, but all swamp infill proposals for this sector were rejected in 1917. By 1922, there were of swampland left in the park, and the Parks Department hoped to convert parts of it for some athletic purpose, but this required the New York Central Railroad to raise one of its bridges first so the swampland could be accessed. However, there are no records of that bridge being raised or of the swamp being converted. In its early years, the lake was used for boating, canoeing, curling, and ice skating. By 1899, the lake was used by up to 3,000 skaters on weekdays and 10,000 on weekends. The ice skating house, shared with the golf course, was added in 1902. By 1935, the lake was used by approximately 20,000 skaters daily.

There are several old growth forests with tree species and genera such as black oak, hickory, beech, cherry birch, sweetgum, red maple, and tuliptree. The forests also contain wild turkeys, red tailed hawks, great horned owls, bats, Eastern chipmunks, Eastern gray squirrels, groundhogs, gypsy moths, Eastern cottontail rabbits, striped skunks, North American raccoons, Virginia opossums, white tailed deer and Eastern coyotes. In addition, over 130 species of butterflies can be found in the park. Its avian population during the winters has exceeded that of either Central or Prospect Parks; a total of 301 bird species have been seen in the park since 1875, when records were first kept. Amphibians present include American bullfrogs, red backed salamanders, and spring peepers. Also present in and around the park's waterways and wetlands are common snapping turtles and Eastern painted turtles, as well as red eared sliders that were introduced to the region.

There are five major hiking trails in the park. The Putnam Trail (1.5 mile (2 km), easy), Previously unpaved, the Putnam Trail underwent a reconstruction project starting in August 2019 and was reopened in October 2020 as a paved pedestrian and bicycle path. The rails themselves were overrun with weeds, but they were no longer usable by trains. A construction contract for the paving project was awarded in October 2018 to Grace Industries, and it was completed in October 2020. The Old Croton Aqueduct Trailway (1.1 mile (2 km), easy/moderate), As part of the Croton Water Filtration Plant project, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection was given $200 million to mitigate the effects of constructing the plant. A feasibility study in 2009 found that a bridge near the location of 233rd Street was the most feasible, and would connect the two sections of the trail. This bridge was deferred over lack of funding in 2014

The John Kieran Nature Trail (1.25 mile (2 km), easy), The path features 13 stone pillars, each made of a different variety of stone, that were tested for the facade of Grand Central Terminal during the terminal's construction. because it was cheap. Various species of trees and flowering plants can be seen along the trail, such as northern red oak, sweetgum, and tulips. There is a large, steep hill in the center of the trail. Shaped as a loop, it extends through the rocky forests of the park's northwestern portion. It was once a "self guided interpretive nature trail" where hikers could observe natural elements along the trail. Along this trail, there is a "thick undergrowth" beneath a "canopy" of deciduous trees that date back centuries. However, logging and forest fires have killed some of these trees. Pioneer species, which inhabit the plots of the forest destroyed by logging and fire, include sumac and black locusts. Some trail sections are a part of the East Coast Greenway, a 3000 mile (4828 km) trail system connecting Maine to Florida.

The Van Cortlandt House in the southern part of Van Cortlandt Park was erected by Frederick Van Cortlandt in 1748. This house still stands, making it the oldest known surviving house in the Bronx. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1967 and became a National Historic Landmark in 1976. Near the museum is a 15 mile marker for the old Albany Post Road, which was relocated to its current position in 1934 after the road was rerouted. In 1938, officials at San Francisco's Golden Gate International Exposition gave a 4.5 feet (1 m) walnut tree to the City of New York, who then planted the tree outside the museum in the place of another tree that had died. Vault Hill, the family burial ground, still exists. Located 169 feet (52 m) above sea level, it is northeast of the Parade Ground and west of Tibbetts Brook and the Van Cortlandt Golf Course. The Memorial Grove honors Bronxites who served in World War II and the Korean War. It is located by the road to the Van Cortlandt House, close to Broadway. Created in 1949, the grove contained a tree and a bronze plaque for each of the 39 soldiers who were memorialized. By the time the grove was renovated in 2011, there were only 18 plaques left.

Van Cortlandt Park contains Citywide Nursery, one of three greenhouses operated by NYC Parks. It grows about 200,000 plants each year.

The Parade Ground is north of the museum, in the western part of the park. When the park was originally built, there was a law dictating that the Parade Ground should be vacated for National Guard use if required. The field was originally used by the National Guard for brigade practice, Today, it contains 10 and a Gaelic football field. The Rolling Stones commenced their Licks Tour here in 2002, getting into a blimp from the Parade Ground. The park is home to a free public pool, along with numerous playgrounds for children and areas dedicated for barbecuing. The pool was added in 1970, though proposals for such a pool date back to 1907. It was designed by Heery & Heery architects and cost $1.6 million. The pool contains a wading pool, a diving pool, and a Olympic sized pool. The Van Cortlandt Stadium was built by Parks Commissioner Moses and Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia during the Great Depression, and was funded by Works Progress Administration. It is located north of Van Cortlandt Park South near Broadway in the park's southwest corner. The stadium opened on September 22, 1939, to a day of track events and a football game between Manhattan College and Fordham University. and in 1998, the 0.25 mile (0 km) running track was rebuilt for nearly a million dollars. In 2015, the Jaspers moved to Dutchess Stadium in Fishkill, New York, but in 2021, the Jaspers moved back to Van Cortlandt Park. Riverdale Stables, located on of the park, offers horseback riding. In 1934, there were two stables: a larger one east of the Putnam Division near Van Cortlandt Avenue and 242nd Street, and a smaller one to the Van Cortlandt Course clubhouse's east. The Indian Field has baseball and softball fields, a sandbox, picnic tables, tennis courts, horseshoes courts, and shuffleboard courts. The Allen Shandler Recreation Area, renamed from the Holly Park Recreation Area in 1966 after a neighborhood boy who was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the 1960s and died at age 15, has baseball fields, benches, picnic tables, barbecue grills, and a comfort station. Other activities available at the park include basketball, ice skating, and fishing. In 1914, a second golf course, the Mosholu Golf Course, opened adjacent to the existing Van Cortlandt Park course. It is located at the southeast end of the park. By the 1930s, both courses were being intensively used, with restaurants located near both clubhouses. Two greens were eventually placed on the filled in marshland. In 2002, a First Tee course, for young golfers, opened at the Mosholu course. The Van Cortlandt Golf Course and its attached clubhouse were renovated from 2007 to 2014 for $5 million. Prior to the renovation, there was poor management, dirty grounds, and "a proliferation of prostitutes and drug dealers operating much too close for comfort plagued the grounds." The renovation overhauled the course with such improvements as seven new greens and a new drainage system. The clubhouse received an infusion of historic golf artifacts from NYC Parks, including "vintage photographs" and an exhibit about the history of the golf ball. Another 1.25 mile (2 km) rubber trail and the 3.1 mile (5 km) cross country trail supplement each other between 241st Street and the city border. Runners on the cross country course typically run 6.2 mile (10 km). They start at the Parade Ground and passing through "the cowpath," "the runners' bridge," Cemetery Hill, and "the back hills," was renovated in 1997 for $2 million, receiving a new layer of asphalt and stone to cover a tangle of "muddy ruts and jutting roots and rocks" that were breaking runners' ankles. The cross country trail is used for the Manhattan College Invitational, one of the largest high school cross country meets in the nation. The tracks are used not only by local high schools, It is the home course for Fordham University; Iona College; New York University; and Manhattan College, located across the street. The college course is 5 mile (8 km) long, crossing the Henry Hudson Parkway at one point. This course was renovated in 1997 for almost $1 million. and 30,000 spectators as Hamilton defeated Ottawa, 11–6.

Before 1992, there was no private maintenance of the park. The earliest efforts for such a thing date to 1983, when an administrator was appointed to oversee both Van Cortlandt and Pelham Bay Parks. Though NYC Parks owns and operates the park, until 2019 maintenance was handled by two separate nonprofit organizations. Van Cortlandt Park Conservancy, a private nonprofit organization founded in 2009, managed educational and cultural programs, and maintains the recreational areas. The Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, an independent nonprofit established in 1992, provided educational programs and assists in the upkeep of the park's natural areas. However, the two organizations have not had the same amount of funding as similar private organizations who manage parks in wealthier areas of the city. In 2013, Friends of Van Cortlandt Park only raised $416,612—as opposed to the Central Park Conservancy, which in 2016 had an $81 million endowment to maintain Central Park, or the Four Freedoms Parks Conservancy, which raised $8 million in 2011 alone for the construction of the Four Freedoms Park. In 2019, it was announced that the two organizations would merge that June. The combined organization, the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, would continue the programming and activities offered by the two organizations.

Early in the park's history, there were calls for a direct route between Woodlawn and Riverdale. Property owners in Woodlawn were calling for such a route by 1893. A preliminary plan for the road was submitted to NYC Parks in 1894. The Woodland Path, built in the late 1890s, was linked in 1902 to a new 2100 feet (640 m) path on the Van Cortlandt Golf Course's eastern perimeter that stretched east to Jerome Avenue. Another road was built in 1902, extending 5960 feet (1817 m) north from West Gun Hill Road to the city line on the park's north side (later Mosholu Avenue; now Mosholu Parkway). It was completed and planted with trees in 1905. A third, 1,800 feet (549 m) road linked Jerome Avenue and East 237th Street to give Woodlawn residents direct access to Jerome Avenue Line streetcars. There were also preparations for a fourth road, which would run north from Mosholu Avenue and then fork into two roads before entering Yonkers. This fourth road, a "driveway" called Rockwood Drive that ran from Mosholu Avenue to the city line at Yonkers, was completed in 1903. An additional spur from Rockwood Drive diverged from the intersection with Mosholu Avenue, terminating at the train station. A pedestrian passage from Jerome Avenue to Gun Hill Road, opened in 1905, also allowed more direct access into the park from Jerome Avenue. These roads allowed park visitors to access more of the park via automobile, but also had the effect of separating existing amenities, such as the golf course and Parade Ground, from each other. By 1906, increased automotive traffic necessitated the widening of Grand Avenue, which adjoined the golf course. A year later in 1907, NYC Parks wanted permission to build a road from the Yonkers shuttle's Caryl Station to Broadway in order to alleviate traffic there. In addition, Rockwood Drive, needed to be rebuilt. There was also a third proposal to pave a trail along the Old Croton aqueduct, which had already received a coating of fill from the Jerome Park Reservoir five years beforehand. No new roads were built until 1929. In the NYC Parks annual report for 1912, it was noted that the park's roads "stood the strain well," but that constant maintenance was needed to keep the roads in good shape. In 1929, Bronx Borough President Harry Bruckner put forth plans for the Grand Concourse to be extended through the park as part of a proposed parkway system. The extension would go under Van Cortlandt Avenue, Jerome Avenue, and Gun Hill Road, going around Mosholu Avenue before taking the route of the Old Croton Aqueduct until it reached East 233rd Street. It would then turn northwest along Mosholu Avenue, crossing Tibbetts Brook and the Putnam Division before ending at the Saw Mill River Parkway. There was pushback from the New York Park Association, the Regional Plan of New York, environmentalists, city planners, and other figures such as former senator Nathan Straus, Jr. These parties' opinions on the proposed extension ranged from rerouting it elsewhere to canceling it completely. The New York State Legislature passed a law that would allow the Grand Concourse to be extended through the park. Following this, there were calls for Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt to veto the bill. Roosevelt vetoed the bill on April 17, 1929. However, there were some influential supporters of the bill, including the Bronx Board of Trade and the Bronx Chamber of Commerce. In 1931 they managed to get the extension built, albeit with a reduction in width from
By 1934, there was a large system of interconnected bridle paths along trails and park roads. One bridle path ran close by to the lake, intersecting with Mosholu Avenue, before looping around the Parade Ground and diverging in the Northwest Woods. The Van Cortlandt Golf Course also had trails, as did the Old Croton Aqueduct and near Jerome Avenue and Holly Lane. However, as the primary roads through the park such as Jerome, Grand, and Mosholu Avenues were constantly maintained and upgraded, secondary roads fell into a state of neglect. One such road was Rockwood Drive, which was closed in 1936 and became a bridle path. Highway construction in the mid 1930s further altered the park. The first of these proposals was the Grand Concourse Extension, later the Mosholu Parkway Extension, which was already being paved in 1934, when Robert Moses became Parks Commissioner. Moses immediately started planning for the Henry Hudson Parkway, which was originally envisioned as an extension of Riverside Drive. As proposed, the parkway would have only skirted the park's northwest corner in order to connect with the Saw Mill River Parkway in Westchester. However, due to that plan's high cost, the route was amended and the Henry Hudson Parkway became an extension of the West Side Elevated Highway, cutting straight through the park to intersect with the Saw Mill River Parkway. Unlike the Concourse extension, the Henry Hudson Parkway was minimally opposed by the community, as it was widely seen as an improvement. Work on the parkway began in 1935. Simultaneously, work progressed on the Mosholu Parkway Extension, and Mosholu Avenue within the park was being modified so that it would be bisected by Henry Hudson Parkway. A bridge was constructed over the railroad in 1940, and a road linking the avenue and the new Mosholu Parkway was opened the next year. Mosholu Parkway was then extended to the Henry Hudson Parkway via a partial cloverleaf interchange built near the park's sole freshwater marsh. When biology teachers who used the marsh for their classes raised concerns about construction, an assistant to Moses said that the marsh would get a landscaping so that it looked like a series of lagoons surrounded by shrubbery. World War II halted all highway construction. By the time the war ended, Moses had become a Construction Coordinator for the city, and in 1947, proposed the Major Deegan Expressway through the park. Since community leaders had some objections to the proposal, Moses held a public hearing to discuss it. Opponents of the plan stated that the expressway would carry heavy truck traffic, as opposed to the existing parkways, where trucks were banned. In response, Moses promised to place landscaping on the new expressway so it would fit with the park's character. This revised plan garnered the support of three prominent Bronx politicians. The city ultimately selected Moses's plan in 1947. The Major Deegan Expressway was finally opened through the park in 1955. The new expressway ran along the rights of way of Grand Avenue and Mosholu Avenue, causing these two roads to be demapped. Since then, there has not been much alteration to the park's roads. as of 2014, there are five pedestrian crossings over the Major Deegan Expressway, mostly in the northern section. The line had two tracks between the Hudson Line junction and the Van Cortlandt station, north of which the tracks merged into one. The company foreclosed in 1887, and the line went under the control of the New York and Northern Railroad Company. Beginning in 1888, another railroad, a 2 mile (3 km) shuttle service operated by Yonkers Rapid Transit Railway, was built to connect Kingsbridge and Yonkers. It ran off the main New York and Putnam Railroad line immediately north of the Van Cortlandt station. There was an additional stop called Mosholu located in the northwest quadrant of the park site at Mosholu Avenue (now Mosholu Parkway). The Mosholu stop was designated as a request stop, wherein trains only stopped upon a passenger's request. A railroad crossing next to the Putnam Division's Van Cortlandt Station was replaced with an underground pedestrian passageway in 1904 to allow safe pedestrian travel in the park. By 1942, the railroad was already seeing signs of decreased ridership: there were 600 daily riders on the Yonkers branch, down from 2,000 daily riders sixteen years prior. The Interstate Commerce Commission gave New York Central Railroad permission to abandon the branch on November 12, 1942. Subsequently, riders filed a lawsuit to keep the line open, and the federal lawsuit was heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, who ruled in favor of the railroad on June 21, 1943. Nine days later, the railroad abandoned the line. By December 1944, the rails were being removed. The main line also saw fewer riders as the years passed, and on March B, 1958, with daily ridership numbering between 400 and 500 commuters, the New York State Public Service Commission gave its approval for the railroad to stop passenger service on the line. The last day of service was June 1, 1958, and the station was abandoned, the line now only being used for freight. Conrail continued to operate the line for freight use, though by 1979 trains only ran twice a day, and hikers often utilized the underused train tracks.

There are two nearby New York City Subway stations. The eastern side of the park is served by Woodlawn , and the western side by 242nd Street The 242nd Street station was part of the first subway line of the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, running along the current IRT Broadway–Seventh Avenue Line to City Hall and later South Ferry. The station, serving as the line's northern terminal, opened in 1908. The Woodlawn station was built later as part of the IRT Jerome Avenue Line, opening in April 1918 as the line's northern terminus. Bus service is provided by New York City Bus's Bx9, Bx10, Bx16, and Bx34 local routes and its BxM3 and BxM4 express routes. Bee Line Bus System's 1, 2, 3, 4, 20, and 21 routes also provide service to Westchester.

Van Cortlandt Park appears in the Nero Wolfe detective stories by Rex Stout. It is where the bodies of several murder victims are found – Joan Wellman in Murder by the Book (1951) and Simon Jacobs in Plot It Yourself (1959). The park is also where the climactic scene of the 1944 novella Booby Trap takes place. The guilty Congressman Shattuck kills himself with a hand grenade after Nero Wolfe convinces him there is no chance of escaping justice. In Sol Yurick's 1965 novel The Warriors, the meeting between New York street gangs called by Ismael Rivera, leader of the Delancey Thrones, takes place in Van Cortlandt Park. In the 1979 film adaptation of Yurick's novel, one of the gangs is called "The Van Cortlandt Rangers." The park is also the place of many happy memories of Horse Badorties, protagonist of William Kotzwinkle's 1974 book The Fan Man. In Philip Kaufman's 1979 film The Wanderers, a football game between The Wanderers and rivals the Del Bombers occurs at Van Cortlandt Park. However, none of the scenes were filmed in the Bronx. Van Cortlandt Park was referenced in José Rivera's play Marisol as a place where neo Nazis burn homeless people alive in the apocalyptic world of the play.