Located at the intersection of 242nd Street and Broadway (US Route 9) in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, it is served by the 1 train at all times.

It is adjacent to Van Cortlandt Park to the east, Manhattan University, and the 240th Street Yard of the subway system, along with the affluent neighborhoods of Fieldston and Riverdale to the west.

After the completion of the Harlem River Ship Canal at the end of the 19th century, the line was rerouted to a new terminus at 242nd Street.

In the early 1890s, the city's transit commissioners had recommended that subway stations be painted and decorated in order to make the experience of using the system pleasant.

Undeveloped lots along Broadway to the city's northern limit were quickly bought by builders hoping to profit from the boom in luxury houses, which could reach the subway through streetcar lines as well.

[8] To address overcrowding, in 1909, the New York Public Service Commission proposed lengthening the platforms at stations along the original IRT subway.

[9]: 168  As part of a modification to the IRT's construction contracts made on January 18, 1910, the company was to lengthen station platforms to accommodate ten-car express and six-car local trains.

[9]: 168 [11] In 1947, Jack Kerouac passed through the station, then a busy trolley hub, at the end of the first leg of his escape from the city in what became On the Road.

[18] A request for proposals was put out on May 18, 2023 for the contract for a project bundle to make 13 stations accessible, including 242nd Street.

Also in the park nearby, to the northeast, is the Van Cortlandt House Museum, a National Historic Landmark.

The 240th Street Yard is beyond the parking garage to the southwest, next to the campus of Manhattan University, a few blocks west of the station.

[23] They are floored in concrete and sheltered with a wooden roof covered in standing-seam metal supported by trussed steel T-frames on the side platforms and timber in the center.

It is topped with a low hipped roof clad in sheet metal and pierced by two ventilating dormer windows on the east and west side.

Gabled standing-seam metal canopies with box fluorescent lighting over the stairs are on narrow supports with slightly fluted capitals.

At street level are gabled entries whose support columns are decorated with a geometric pattern similar to that on the control house's projecting bay window.

There is a modern steel and glass token booth and turnstile bank, along with MetroCard vending machines.

It is a one-story building sided in corrugated metal with a flat roof, elevated over the tracks and platforms at that end.

[4] At the south end, a series of projecting nested bays descends to an entrance to track level.