Located on NYC Parkland in the triangular area created as Riverside Drive, Broadway, and Dyckman St. intersect. This area was called Inwood Plaza until 1950 when the name was changed by the City Council to Lt. William Tighe Square. Lt. Tighe fought in both World Wars and was decorated several times. He was secretary of the Inwood chamber of Commerce for many years and a member of the American Legion and Catholic War Veterans. It was Lt. Tighe who started the tradition of placing a Christmas tree in the triangle every year, a tradition which continues, but with a live spruce tree. Lt. Tighe died at the Veterans Hospital in the Bronx on Sept. 27, 1944 after being wounded during World War II. In 1990 neighborhood volunteers turned the asphalted triangle into an oasis of beauty. 1885 — Marshland In 1885 Lt. Tighe Square was the western end of a marsh that ran from the Harlem River to south of Dyckman street. At the time a drainage ditch was being dug through a peat bog, a local public school principal found a broken tusk. He brought the specimen to the American Museum of Natural History for identification. 11,005 BC The tusk belonged to Mammut americanum the American mastodon. This elephant-like mammal had a shaggy brown coat and upward-curving tusks. They lived in spruce forests which covered the eastern United States and browsed on twigs, leaves, mosses and spruce cones. The mastodons lived in North America 2 million years ago until 10,000 when climatic changes disrupted the forest distribution in the northeast. The mastodon tusk found at the site has been dated at about 13,000 years ago when dense spruce forests covered what is now New York City.

Nothing like we remember!
The garden on the square is behind a steel fence, chains and padlocks. I wonder why that is?

Notice the new fence. Still padlocked with chains!