Van Cortlandt House Museum offers free field trips for Bronx public schools, expands programming and community advisory committee

Margaret Holmes, director of the Van Cortlandt House Museum, told Community Board 11’s Education, Culture and Youth Services Committee that the museum provides free field trips for Bronx public schools and is expanding programs and community outreach. Holmes spoke during the committee’s meeting and invited board members to participate in a newly formed community advisory committee.

Holmes said the museum’s educational program highlights multiple layers of local history — indigenous, Dutch and African — and was developed to align with New York City fourth-grade curriculum while remaining adaptable for other grades. “I’ve been the director of Van Cortlandt House for just going on a year now, and we’ve had a really good active year,” Holmes said.

The nut of the matter is that Van Cortlandt House, located within Van Cortlandt Park, is emphasizing fuller, more transparent interpretation of its past. The house dates to 1748 and, the director said, “The Van Cortlands were enslavers,” a history the museum is integrating into programs. The museum is also working with the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans on Native-focused programming and with other Bronx historic-house sites to broaden reach.

Holmes outlined several program and outreach items: the museum offers free field trips to Bronx public schools starting in the 2024–25 school year; curriculum was developed with fourth-grade standards but “is very much adaptable” for grades 3 through 12 and can be tailored for K–2 visits; and the museum runs a hybrid lecture series and public events. Scheduled events Holmes named include a Revolutionary War walk on June 10 called Between Enemy Lines, a herbal medicine program with Stockbridge Munsee herbalist Misty Cook Davids on July 13, and an outdoor musical event titled This Man’s a Spy on July 17.

Holmes said the house is a member of the Historic House Trust of New York City and described the site’s landscape as containing “many layers of history” that the museum is trying to make visible to Bronx audiences, including Caribbean and Latin American connections to colonial New York. “We’ve been offering tours on the Caribbean connections between the Van Cortlands and the park,” she said, noting that the Bronx’s large Caribbean and Latin American population is a central audience for those efforts.

On governance and outreach, Holmes said she has formed a community advisory committee in partnership with the Historic House Trust. The committee has met quarterly so far, she said, and its members will assist with community feedback and help produce a community-informed strategic plan for the museum. Holmes invited Community Board 11 members to join or help recruit members and said she would send documentation about the advisory committee to the board. “My door is always open,” she said, providing an email contact in the meeting: margaret at vchm dot org.

Committee members asked practical questions about booking and grade-level fit. Lisa, a committee member, asked how schools schedule visits; Holmes replied that schools can book through the museum website (vchm.org) via an online booking system called Explorable Places or by emailing information@vchm.org. Holmes recommended the field-trip scope primarily for grades 3–12 but said the program can be adapted for younger students.

No formal actions or votes were taken on the museum presentation. Holmes said she will follow up by sending a written summary of the advisory-committee plan and that she is available to provide guided tours for board members.

Van Cortlandt House’s programming expansion and outreach aim to connect local K–12 education and Bronx communities to understudied aspects of the site’s history, including enslavement, indigenous presence and transatlantic trade links.