Riverdale's written history began in 1609, when explorer Henry Hudson anchored offshore seeking shelter from a storm…

Riverdale has enjoyed a rich and colorful history in the centuries since indigenous peoples made their home among its fertile hills and valleys along the Hudson River. Many of Riverdale’s landmarks are named from their languages; &ildquo;shorrack-kappock,” the Native American name for the ridge known today as Spuyten Duyvil, inspired Kappock Street. Unfortunately little else remains of the original inhabitants of Riverdale.

In 1609, Henry Hudson, probably the first European to see the Riverdale shoreline, anchored his ship the Halve Maen in Spuyten Duyvil Creek seeking shelter from a storm.

Thirty years later the area was settled by Jonas Bronck, a Swedish sea captain from the Netherlands who opened the way to the Dutch, German, and Danish settlers who followed. The borough still bears his name: the Bronx.

The Riverdale area was of great strategic importance in the Revolutionary era. It overlooked and dominated the plain where the Van Cortlandt House and the King’s Bridge were located. The King’s Bridge connected Manhattan with the mainland, and was the point at which the road from the city divided into the three major routes to the north: the post roads to Albany, White Plains, and Boston.

The steep ridge south of Riverdale, overlooking the entry of the Harlem River into the Hudson, was called Spuyten Duyvil by the Dutch. Washington Irving attributes the name to Peter Stuyvesant's trumpeter, who swore to row across the rough stretch where the waters met "in spite of the devil." What was once Spuyten Duyvil Creek has been straightened and widened into today's Harlem River Ship Canal, bridged by the steel arch of the Henry Hudson Bridge (1936).

From 1851 the New York and Hudson Railroad, running along the east shore of the river, offered a connection between Manhattan and a stop at Riverdale-on-Hudson, today's 254th Street. The train crossing made the shoreline of Riverdale attractive to developers who built homes there for wealthy Manhattan residents.

In the second half of the 19th century, the area consisted of large estates and farmland, such as the Augustus Van Cortlandt and John Dickinson Estates, with the beginnings of residential development. The ridge above the train station gradually filled with the estates of wealthy commuters. Greyston (1864), Alderbrook (1880), Stonehurst (1861), and Oaklawn (1863) are mansions which survive; there's also a Riverdale Historic District, buildings which were once the outbuildings and carriage houses of the grand estates. A bridge and parkway connection to Manhattan brought new houses, smaller but not less.