The Van Cortlandt House Museum is a private, non-profit institution founded in 1896 by the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York, a licensee of the City of New York. Van Cortlandt House was built in 1748 for Frederick Van Cortlandt and was the focal point of an expansive and prosperous wheat plantation. The Museum collection contains Van Cortlandt family materials and furnishings appropriate to this interpretive period.