Named after the World Trade Center and Cortlandt Street, which recalls the Van Cortlandt family.
Oloff Van Cortlandt, a rich brewer who arrived in New Amsterdam in 1637 and was burgomaster from 1655 to 1666, owned the land the street was laid on; his son Stephanus was the city’s first native-born mayor. Most of the street was razed in the mid-1960s for the World Trade Center. The station, long called Cortlandt Street, reopened in 2018 as WTC Cortlandt.