NYC Subway Restaurant Tour, Part I: Lake House Cafe (Van Cortlandt Park)
I have written two books about restaurants accessible by the Staten Island Ferry and Railway. I’ve started another about those accessible by the NYC Ferry. But what if you don’t want to use a boat when you’re hungry and want to explore? Welcome to the NYC Subway Restaurant Tour, surely the basis of enough books to keep me busy for the rest of my life. Today my brief was to travel to the northern end of the city’s oldest subway line, to combine a museum visit and a stroll along a lake with lunch in a restaurant overlooking a park. All of it in the Bronx, a first for any of the Tours.
I had intended to start this first episode at the Van Cortlandt Park station on Broadway Local, also known as the number 1. It’s the number 1 train in the city, as I never tire of telling people.
The train is elevated in this northern stretch, looming over Broadway, as the long diagonal street continues from Manhattan into the Bronx (and points north).
I had intended to get off at 242nd Street but a vandal left an MTA crew cleaning up broken glass.
So I followed a fellow passenger down the stairwell at 238th Street instead. If it looks like a long way down, it is — the platform is between the second and third floors of the nearby building. Like most stations, this one is not handicapped accessible. An effort to make more stations accessible died with the governor’s “pause” of congestion pricing.
In the Bronx you will find many things named Van Cortlandt, starting with Van Cortlandt Park, third-largest in the city. In the southwest corner of it note the red push-pin for the Lake House Cafe and the faint blue one for the Van Cortlandt House Museum. The big green patch to the right is Woodlawn Cemetery (I’ll get to you someday) and the blue stripe at far left is the Hudson River. Note how the urban highways of Robert Moses have cut the park to pieces.
Here is the Van Cortlandt House Museum, one of today’s two tourist attractions.
Another attraction is this large body of water, where I took a walk (though the muggy weather discouraged a full tour of the perimeter). Google Maps refer to this body of water as Van Cortlandt Lake, but it is not a lake, and no longer Van Cortlandt. It is now Piero & Hester’s Mill Pond. Thereon hangs a story we’ll get to later.
Next to the water is the Lake House Cafe, designed to cater to users of the Van Cortlandt Park Golf Course (though users of the nearby Mosholu Golf Course, VC Pool, VC Tennis Courts, and hikers on the park’s numerous trails are probably welcome too).
That’s the list: museum, lake, restaurant. Let’s start with the Van Cortlandt House Museum. It was built in 1749 by Frederick Van Cortlandt, son of the patriarch Jacobus Van Cortlandt, and turned into a museum in 1897. Sadly, Frederick did not live to see the house completed.
That dude standing guard out front must be old man Jacobus Van Cortlandt himself, right? Or maybe Frederick?
Actually, no.
That is Major General Josiah Porter, the first Harvard graduate to join the Union Army. Thank you for your service, sir.
The place is open. Let’s go in, shall we? Proof that even a doofus does something right once in a while, I arrived on the day of the week when admission was free.
Gryphons guard what was probably the front door. While we tour the house, here are some fun fax about Jacobus Van Cortlandt, after whom so many things have been named:
He was born in New York when it was still called New Amsterdam.
He was the Mayor of New York City.
His mother is said to have brought the Santa Claus tradition to America.
He was a wealthy merchant.
A wealthy slave-trading merchant. In addition to trading humans like commodities, he also owned them, right here in the State of New York. The Empire State did not end slavery within its borders until 1817, with final emancipation following in 1827, allowing three generations of Van Cortlandts (Jacobus, Frederick, August) to use them as farm hands on the plantation they slowly amassed from indigenous people and other farmers.
Nearby the house is the Kingsbridge Burial Ground, where the Africans and “Indians” who helped the Van Cortlandts get rich and stay rich are buried in unmarked graves along with the earliest settlers.
The slaves helped build the house, the Parks Dept. informed me. The oldest building in the Bronx, it is made of fieldstone. The neighborhood west of the park, quite a nice one, is called Fieldston (see map a few pics above). Fieldstone is usually a mix of granite, sandstone, and limestone, and is found near the surface of the earth where has been dragged from place to place by glaciers.
Two of those slaves were Piero the Miller and his wife Hester. A brook was dammed to power the Van Cortlandt Mill, creating the pond. In their honor, the Parks Dept. renamed Van Cortlandt Lake as the Piero & Hester Mill Pond, per sign at right.
There is a lot of greenery here.
You can go right down to the water’s edge and sit by it, if you like. The stuff going right up to the edge of the not altogether visible stone bench below appears solid, like lichen on a rock, but is not.
This might be a better place to sit.
A Parks Dept. historian writes: “It is surmised that Piero was quite good at his job, which may be why he was allowed to keep his family intact, his wife Hester and their son Peter living with him on the plantation.”
I shared the path along the pond with golf carts.
A view of the fairway, if that’s what this is called.
Time for lunch! The thousands of readers who bought my book Another Staten Island Restaurant Tour: Off the Rails and Onto the Bus, or are probably intending to, may recall I enjoyed a spicy veggie burger at The Veranda, overlooking the Silver Lake Golf Course. In the Bronx, I went for the turkey club. A sign in the window of the Lake House Cafe said “RANGERS NEEDED. FREE GOLF.”
The interior was spacious and pleasant, if a bit dark.
The Lake House is also a golf club, and still in use as such, judging from the fresh padlocks on the varnished dark wooden lockers upstairs.
I went up for a quick look but the stifling heat quickly drove me back down to the air-conditioned restaurant.
This was my view of the lake/pond, such as it was, slightly obstructed by a security precaution.
The club sandwich was turkey with bacon on nicely toasted wheat bread.
The turkey was turkey roll, but the salad fixings were fresh, and the help was cordial and conscientious.
I was made to feel welcome and enjoyed the sandwich. And the pickle chips.
The bottle of water I selected from the cooler was having a hard time staying upright, and really, don’t we all have days like that sometimes? I gave it the best possible chance to succeed by standing it up against the condiment tray.
The restaurant has its own restrooms though there are additional ones nearby accessible from the outside, presumably for those using the golf course and other athletic facilities. Here is the sign for “Gentlemen.” I once told a friend, “a gentleman never leaves home without a handkerchief,” and he said, “I guess I’m not a gentleman then.” It was the only thing he ever said that annoyed me.
Here is the 242nd St. station at the end of the line, as I walked past it en route to 238th St. The stairwells and station have been renewed since 1904, when the Broadway Local began rolling, but the ironwork is probably original. This ain’t no retro. This is the real shit.
Back at 238th St., where my day in the Bronx had started, I noted the patterns of rust forming on the steel panels of the elevated station — a sign of deadly neglect for our long-underfunded transit system.
But they might make good material for the aspiring art photographer — or for Volume IV of my series of ebooks compiling videoconferencing backgrounds. I should road-test them with my Zoom buddies.
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