In a centuries-old farmhouse in Queens, Steve Eftimiades has been known to serve guests colonial fare at candlelit banquets. At the Van Cortlandt House, Laura Carpenter lets her dachshunds run amok in her backyard, the more than 1,000-acre park of the same name. And when the lights in the storybook cottage in a West Bronx playground go on at night, it is not the ghost of its most famous tenant, Edgar Allan Poe — the new caretaker is probably just home for the evening.

The little-known program under the auspices of the Historic House Trust, administered by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation in partnership with private organizations that care for the properties, was established to ensure that someone was around to protect these buildings from vandalism, fire and frost.

Even though the applications are available online and anyone can apply, many of the positions go to those with connections to the world of historical preservation. Still, there is remarkably little competition for the slots and no requirement to reapply, so those who are handed the keys to these mansions often keep them for decades. The city even pays the utilities.

But Franklin Vagnone, the executive director of the trust, said the chief attraction of the houses was the opportunity to interact with the history of the people who had lived there. “The houses provide a kind of physical manifestation for that legacy,” he said.