In 1975, a member of the local community board proposed that the Amalgamated and its surroundings be renamed, and a sign was unveiled designating the area Van Cortlandt Village.

[5] The Historic Districts Council in early January 2012 recognized Van Cortlandt Village as a New York City neighborhood in need of preservation.

In Van Cortlandt Village, the Fort Independence Park Neighborhood Association has been fighting a handful of land grabs and new housing projects.

The community sits atop the ruins of a Revolutionary War fort and was designed by legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

It boasts small Tudor revival homes and during the 1920s became a mecca for socialist factory workers fleeing the tenements of the lower East Side to build cooperative housing.

As of 2015[update] some former co-ops such as the Shalom Aleichem Houses had fallen on hard times and the character of the neighborhood was threatened by overdevelopment, so HDC committed to help FIPNA get it listed on the national historic register, according to Kristin Hart, president of the community group.

[8] The community, eventually named for legendary Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem,[9] was founded as one of the country's first housing cooperatives.

[12] On September 28, 2004, the New York City Department of City Planning approved the rezoning all or portions of 15 blocks in this northwestern Bronx neighborhood (bounded by Van Cortlandt Park South to the north, Fort Independence Park and Sedgwick Avenue to the east, West 231st Street and Albany Crescent to the south, and by Heath Avenue, Fort Independence Street and Orloff Avenue to the west) into Van Cortlandt Village,[13] which is located within Community District 8.

[14] The zoning changes aimed to preserve the community's low-rise/low-density character by ensuring that new development is compatible in scale, both with the one- and two-family detached homes that prevail in parts of the neighborhood and with the more diverse housing stock in others.

The New York Times describes the area as a "serene enclave of quaint homes, winding streets and abundant trees.

With nearly 1,500 units in 11 buildings, the complex was founded in 1927 by leaders of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union, who fashioned it as a sort of proletarian paradise.

While some of the descendants of the mostly Jewish immigrants who made up the Amalgamated's original tenants remain, a more diverse collection of residents carry on its legacy, with communal enterprises like children's play groups and art classes.

Close nearby, to the west and southwest of Van Cortlandt Village, two new large commercial shopping malls were constructed and opened in 2014.

The following MTA Regional Bus Operations bus routes serve Van Cortlandt Village:[28] The nearby Major Deegan Expressway (Interstate 87) and Henry Hudson Parkway offer a relatively quick route to Upper Manhattan as well as to Bergen County, New Jersey via the George Washington Bridge.