Perhaps a remnant of the old Lorillard estate — the Lorillards started what is now the Lorillard Tobacco Company (which makes Newport and Kent cigarettes, among others) in 1760, building a still-standing snuff mill down by the Bronx River in the 1840s — this little overlook now sits alone in the woods just off the Bronx River Parkway.
This is the balustrade for “the Education Pavilion” built by the Botanical Garden when our boundary went all the way to Bronx Park East. There were once pillars and a roof, and it overlooked Long Lake, now the bed of the parkway.
Thanks, Wayne — mystery solved!