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Drums Along the Hudson

Drums Along the Hudson, Inwood Hill Park Native American Festival, May 2009

 Four hundred years ago  Henry Hudson and his crew of the Half Moon first encountered the Lenape Indians living and thriving near the mouth of the Spuyten Duyvil. Flash forward to the eighth annual Drums Along the Hudson: A Native American Festival enjoyed by young, old, Native American and Native New Yorker alike.

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Late 19th Century Inwood- Part III

William Calver

Much of what we know today about the history and pre-history of  Inwood and Washington Heights is due largely to the turn of the century work of amateur historians, self taught archaeologists and close friends William Calver  and Reginald Bolton. Starting in the 1880′s Bolton and Calver began exploring northern Manhattan with picks and shovels, [...]

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Tulip Tree Poem

Tulip Tree of old Inwood

In 1933 a bizarre trinity of adventure, history and poetry converged on Inwood Hill Park to celebrate the majesty of Inwood’s fabled tulip tree. Under the auspices of “Indian Day,” an ode to the mighty tulip was commissioned in the form of a “tone poem”– that is a poem set to the music of German [...]

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Tulip Tree of Old Inwood

The Tulip Tree of old Inwood, New York.

Before Inwood Hill Park, before there even was an Inwood, a mighty Tulip grew in the forest. In a new city lacking a sense of anything from antiquity, New Yorkers latched onto a tree. The giant tulip of Inwood became a popular destination for picnickers, school children and hikers looking to escape the other world [...]

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Inwood Hill Park

Photo of duck swimming in Inwood Hill Park in New York.

Dyckman Street, Hudson River, Harlem River Ship Canal Manhattan Acres: 196.40 There’s old New York, and then there’s old New York. Inwood Hill Park is a living piece of old New York. Evidence of its prehistoric roots exists as dramatic caves, valleys, and ridges left as the result of shifting glaciers. Evidence of its uninhabited [...]

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Forgotten Cemeteries of Inwood

Old Cemetary in Inwood, New York. The old Dyckman and Nagle graveyard.

It’s hard to imagine an Inwood with mansions on the hill, a dirt road below, and just east of that cemeteries….yep….Cemeteries. Hundreds of years of even sparse population generated numerous graves. In some lay the long forgotten members of once famous families. In other plots were the remains of slaves, the fallen dead of the [...]

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