Sti Winner of Vol. 71, No. 38
What’s inside?
Thursday, October 29, 2020
n It didn’t all start with just Irish immigrants and some well-to-do aristocrats kbrendlen@riverdalepress.com
Martin kids might not be very old, but they are getting a taste of the business world with their new venture. Page A7
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Before Van Cortlandts, there were the Munsee By KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
Not just crafts
the Pulitzer Prize
The history of Riverdale and Kingsbridge often seems to start in the 1600s with the arrival of the prestigious Van Cortlandt family. They bought up large tracts of land, including what is now Van Cortlandt Park. It joins a shared history that includes the now-buried King’s Bridge, and the later-arriving Irish immigrants bringing a strong Catholic influence still evident in the schools and churches that dot the neighborhood. Despite their names plastered all over the park and other New York neighborhoods, the Van Cortlands weren’t the ones doing the hard work. Enslaved people built the manor, cleared land for Albany Post Road, and likely built the King’s Bridge. Some are buried in Van Cortlandt Park, near the Putnam Trail. All that work was done in Lenapehoking — Lenape land, which spread from modern-day New Jersey through parts of Dela-
ware and Pennsylvania, and, infamously, Manhatta — later called Manhattan. The people who lived in this part of the Bronx spoke the Munsee dialect.
Duped sellers The “sale” of the island is one of the best-known histories. It’s commemorated in a sculpture in lower Manhattan and taught in schools — Lenape leaders met with Dutch colonists and gave up their rights to the land. “That is a concept that is inappropriate,” said Curtis Zunigha, resources cultural director for the Delaware Tribe of Indians and co-director of the Lenape Center. “That the Lenape just said, ‘Here, buy all of this land, we’ll take a few trinkets and axes and copper plates, and we’ll get in our wagons and go.’ It was not like that at all.” About a decade after that “sale,” a similar deal was struck in the Bronx. Adraein Van der Donck had been put in charge of land north of Manhattan, in what is now the Bronx and Yonkers — land where Lenape people still lived. Van der Donck allegedly struck a deal with two men, Claes de Wilt and Towachkak, to sell the land, Kingsbridge Historical Society president Nick Dembowski said. But the concept of selling the land was
HIRAM ALEJANDRO DURÁN
The Van Cortlandt House museum is one of the oldest homes in the Bronx, and is built on land purchased from the Lenape people. Jacobus Van Cortlandt started developing his estate on what would eventually be Van Cortlandt Park — large parts of which were home to former Lenape homes and burial grounds. “anathema” to the Lenape, Dembowski said. They wouldn’t have intended for it to be the modern understanding of a land sale. “The idea was an exchange of gifts for the purpose of shared occupancy in peace and brotherhood for the purpose of engaging in trade and commerce,” Zunigha said. “And it was the clash of cultures and the clash of cultural values ended up with the
Lenape being in the position of being on the short end of the stick, as they say. And it was simply because they didn’t understand it, and then they were overwhelmed with military might and the sheer number of colonizers.” The deed for this part of the Bronx, Dembowski said, has been lost — it’s not known exactly what was agreed to. Claes MUNSEE, page A4
Creepy and spooky Honoring veterans Herb Barret is where he always is on Veterans Day: Honoring his fellow soldiers. Page A8
Nursing homes are buckling down for a new wave n There are no short memories among nurses who fear what COVID-19 might bring this time By KIRSTYN BRENDLEN kbrendlen@riverdalepress.com
Owed a debt City teachers have waited years for a raise promised by the mayor, but now they’ll have to wait a little longer. Page A11
HIRAM ALEJANDRO DURÁN
A house near Ewen Park in Spuyten Duyvil gets in on the Halloween spirit just in time for the annual holiday. While age-old practices like trick-or-treating will likely be different this year, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, still expect to see many youngsters dressed up and making the best of Halloween. Even Manhattan College won’t give up on the holiday, turning its annual Safe Halloween event into something new and virtual. Learn more on page A10.
The house on West 246th Street that simply isn’t supposed to exist n Neighbors claim housing construction project was never permitted in first place By MICHAEL HINMAN mhinman@riverdalepress.com
Halloween is that time of year when we hear stories about the scary and the unexplained. None of those stories are real. At least we hope they’re not. But there is one very real mystery at 625 W. 246th St., and neighbors — as well as some city officials — are anxiously waiting to solve the ghost house that isn’t supposed to be there. No, it’s not haunted or anything like that. Instead, this home — currently on the market with a listing price well over $4 million — is nothing what the developer originally permitted. In fact, Community Board 8 land use committee chair Charles Moerdler believes the house may actually violate Special Natural Area District Rules designed to protect the greenway through that part of Riverdale. But there might not be much the city can GHOST HOUSE, page A4
HIRAM ALEJANDRO DURÁN
Buyers have been taking a close look at what seems to be a new home at 625 W. 246th St., in Riverdale — especially as it’s the first palatial house anyone sees driving up Blackstone Place. Community Board 8 land use committee chair Charles Moerdler says it could very well be worth every penny of its $4.5 million listing price, but he warns the home still might have legal trouble ahead.
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With a change in seasons and a drop in infection rates, conversation around the coronavirus pandemic shifted over the summer. Where a traumatic spring of overflowing hospitals and hundreds of deaths a day in the city had kept focus on “flattening the curve” and reducing transmission, months of infection rates below 1 percent prompted conversations about the struggling restaurant industry, schools reopening, and vaccine development. As hospitalizations and new cases dropped, so did positive cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes after more than 6,000 people died, according to the state health department. Those deaths were cause for intense scrutiny. Many criticized Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to have nursing homes accept COVID-positive patients from hospitals, and some of them suspected the number of reported deaths wasn’t quite accurate. Some politicians, including state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, called for special protections for nursing homes to be rolled back. Those protections, implemented in the state budget, raised the standard for civil suits against nursing homes and other health care facilities — which some said insulated them from being held accountable for coronavirus-related deaths. According to the state health department, at least 300 people were confirmed to have died from COVID in Bronx nursing homes as of Oct. 22 — and an additional 187 are presumed to have died from COVID, meaning their symptoms matched those caused by the virus, but they lacked an official diagnosis or positive test. Seven people died at other adult care facilities, like assisted living centers. Those numbers have been relatively stable through the summer, but as cooler weather settles in, New York has seen a small bump in the number of cases and hospitalizations — as have neighboring states like New Jersey and Connecticut. It hasn’t been enough to implement restrictions beyond “hot zones” in Brooklyn, Queens and a few other counties, but it has started fears of a “second wave” in the state — just in time for flu NURSING, page A4