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While there was widespread settlement of this area by Native Americans, this site has been so extensively excavated in construction of the reservoir, that the mounds adjacent to Fort Independence Park are thought to be the only undisturbed area where Native American artifacts or remains of early European settlements might be found.
Kingsbridge Heights was an area of great strategic importance in the Revolutionary era. The area was often thought of as part of Fordham Heights or called the heights overlooking Kingsbridge. It overlooked and dominated the plain where the Van Cortlandt House and the Kingís Bridge were located, in the valley of the Tibbettís Brook, between the heights and Riverdale (once known as Cordlands Hill). The Kingís Bridge over the Harlem River was Manhattan Islandís overland connection with the mainland. At this point the road from the city divided and led to the three major routes to the north, the post roads to Albany, White Plains and Boston. There were a number of Revolutionary War forts in Kingsbridge Heights for defense of the Kingís Bridge over the Harlem River. George Washington stayed at the nearby Van Cortlandt mansion and made a temporary headquarters there early in the Revolutionary War, before retreating to the north. The area fell to the British and was occupied. General Washington also stayed in the Van Cortlandt mansion at the end of the war, during his triumphant return to New York, which became the first capital of the U.S. Revolutionary war relics were found during construction of the Jerome Park Reservoir. Sites of two of the forts have become neighborhood parks around the reservoir: Old Fort Four Park and Fort Independence Park.
In the second half of the 19th century, the Kingsbridge Heights area consisted of large estates and farmland, such as the Augustus Van Cortlandt and John Dickinson Estates, with the beginnings of residential development. In 1866, the American Jockey Club developed a racetrack called Jerome Park, named for Leonard W. Jerome, the Wall Street speculator whose daughter, Jennie Jerome Churchill, was Winston Churchillís mother. The track was located on the Bathgate Estate, approximately where Lehman College is today . Jerome, who was head of the NY Jockey Club, had been encouraged by the success of the track at Saratoga Springs, New York. Jerome Park was the first formal, commercial racetrack in New York City, and was the original home of the Belmont Stakes race, named for August Belmont, one of Jeromeís friends and backers. The track was closed in 1887. Jerome Avenue, which ran past the race track, was also named for Leonard Jerome. It was also known as Central Avenue and was a continuation of the Central Avenue that ran from White Plains down through Westchester, Van Cortlandt Park and the Bronx to the Macombs Dam Bridge (which spans the Harlem River to Manhattan). The relation of Central Avenue in Yonkers to Jerome Avenue in the Bronx is no longer apparent, because the Major Deegan Expressway runs along the bed of the former Central Avenue in Van Cortlandt Park north of East 233rd Street, severing the connection for local traffic. Jerome Park was in the 24th Ward of New York City, a part of the territory annexed from Westchester in 1874, and consolidated into the Borough of the Bronx in 1898. In 1877, the Department of Public Parks issued plans of existing streets and planned streets and parks designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect and J. J. R. Croes, Civil and Topographical Engineer. This project, intended to develop the newly acquired districts in a way that would preserve the beauty and park-like character of certain areas, such as Riverdale and Kingsbridge Heights. According to Charles E. Beveridge, Editor of the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers, the plan for the 23rd and 24th Wards was Olmstedís, "...largest and most comprehensive city planning project for which he actually prepared plans as well as written reports...the closest thing to a full city plan that Olmsted ever attempted." The area surrounding the Jerome Park Reservoir is a remarkably intact portion of the Olmsted and Croes plan of 1877. According to Daniel J. Donovan, the Topographic Engineer of the Borough of the Bronx: "To determine the extent to which Olmstedís design was actually followed in the Kingsbridge Heights vicinity, the plan [Adopted Map D No. 23] was compared with the final adopted map: Section 21 of Final Maps and Profiles of the 23rd and 24th Wards, dated June 17, 1895, Topographical Bureau, Louis A. Risse Chief Engineer. Comparison of these plans confirms that the Final Map of 1895 is substantially in conformance with the 1877 Olmsted plan, much of it, in fact, in exact conformance. The most significant change in the Kingsbridge Heights vicinity from the 1877 Olmsted design to the Final Map of 1895 is the inclusion of the Jerome Park Reservoir." It is clear that Olmstedís intent in providing neighborhoods like Kingsbridge Heights with narrow, curvilinear streets was to assure that they would maintain their residential character, discourage inappropriate development, and preserve their existing natural beauty. The charming character of the residential neighborhoods surrounding the reservoir is due not to chance, but to the intervention of Olmsted, whose influence similarly saved Riverdale from the imposition of a rectilinear street grid. One of the great distinctions between Olmstedís work in Central Park and in the Riverdale and Kingsbridge Heights areas was that the site on which Central Park was built was not considered attractive: it consisted of empty lots, squatter camps, marshes and even a bone boiling yard. The landscape of the park is almost entirely artificial. Riverdale and Kingsbridge Heights, on the other hand, had a naturally exquisite landscape which had only to be enhanced with the skillful introduction of roadways, and limited commercial areas to serve extensive residential areas. One wonders why this ambitious and sophisticated design by Olmsted, undertaken just a few years after the opening of Central Park in 1874, is so little known. While his plans for the Bronx were adopted by the city and went into construction, Olmsted fought bitterly against politicians whom, ì...he accused of interfering with his designs and according more importance to patronage than to ... proper administration.î Olmsted was dismissed by the Department of Public Parks in 1878. He moved to Brookline, Massachusetts in 1882, just before the appointment of the Aqueduct Commissioners, when debate on the design of the New Croton Aqueduct and Jerome Park Reservoir was heating up. Olmsted may have maintained contact with Benjamin S. Church, his club-mate from the Union League Club, until Churchís own downfall with the city bureaucracy. Olmsted is known to have, "...continued to concern himself with the fate of public parks in New York City..." According to the Encyclopedia of the City of New York:
In the decades following Olmstedís dismissal detailed plans for the Mosholu Parkway were developed. In 1888 the Van Cortlandt estate and many other parcels became parks. The planning of streets in the 23rd and 24th Wards was turned over from the Department of Public Parks to the Commissioner of Street Improvements. In 1892 Heintz and Risse prepared the design for the Speedway Concourse (later named the Grand Boulevard and Concourse) to the east of Jerome Avenue. When the Jerome Park Reservoir went into construction, the surrounding streets had single family homes with some small farms remaining. When the east basin of the reservoir was turned over to other city agencies, the Kingsbridge Armory was constructed, followed by schools, including DeWitt Clinton High School, Bronx High School of Science and Hunter College (now Lehman College, Illustration 40). As the twentieth century progressed, apartment buildings were constructed to take advantage of the view of the reservoir and its grounds (Illustrations 1 and 5).
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