The Entrance & Hallway
Visitors to Van Cortlandt House enter through the front door of the home that Frederick Van Cortlandt built but may have never occupied. 
Begun in 1748, Frederick's house was nearing completion by the fall of 1749. In his will of October 2, 1748, he writes,
"...Whereas I am now about finishing a large stone dwelling House on the Plantation on which I now live..."
Frederick died 12, February 1749.
Frederick's "large stone dwelling House" was built in a vernacular version of the then-popular Georgian style of architecture. Despite his choice of an English inspired Georgian aesthetic, Frederick also chose to represent the family's Dutch heritage in the keystone gargoyle faces placed above each window on the facade (front) elevation of the House. This is a very unusual, treatment in Colonial American architecture, yet much more common in Europe during the same period.
The Central Hallway of a Georgian house was often used as a public space for receiving visitors before they were invited into one of the more private and formal rooms such as the East Parlor. A plantation worker having business with Frederick or one of the Van Cortlandt's may have spoken with him in the hall and have never entered the parlors. Two public reception rooms open off the front hall.