The Parks and Cemeteries 293 



Of all the Bronx parks, Van Cortlandt, the second in size, 

 is the most interesting historically. It comprises 1132.35 

 acres, and extends from the city line on the north to West 

 240th Street — Van Cortlandt Park South — on the south. 

 Its western boundary is Broadway, and its eastern Jerome 

 and Mt. Vernon avenues. Both the old and the new Croton 

 aqueducts traverse it from north to south ; and it is crossed by 

 the main line and the Yonkers branch of the Putnam Railroad. 

 The aqueduct now building to bring water from the Catskills 

 also traverses the park. Jerome Avenue cuts through its 

 northeastern part, and Mosholu Avenue and Gun Hill Road 

 cross it from east to west, while Grand Avenue crosses on the 

 eastern side as far as the lake. The park lies in the valley 

 of Tippett's Brook, which cuts it approximately in half from 

 north to south, between the Fordham ridge on the east and 

 the Spuyten Duyvil ridge on the west. The greater part of 

 the park is still in a state of nature, with swamps, woods, and 

 rocky precipitous ridges, or cleared spaces only where former 

 occupants cultivated their land. 



The park occupies a portion of the Betts and Tippett tract 

 of 1668, almost all of the John Hadden, or Heddy, tract of 

 the same date, and portions of the farms acquired from the 

 Commissioners of Forfeiture of the Philipseburgh Manor in 

 J 785 by John Warner and George Hadley. 



In 1699, Jacobus Van Cortlandt, who had married Eva, 

 the adopted daughter of Frederick Philipse, bought from 

 his father-in-law fifty acres of land on George's Point, and 

 added to it about one hundred acres more that he pur- 

 chased from the neighboring landowners. These constituted 

 the nucleus of the Van Cortlandt estate. Later proprie- 

 tors added more land, until the estate became almost 

 manorial in size. The property was entailed until 1825, 



