Montauk Memorial Triangle

This triangle and the road on which it lies on are named for the Montauk people, Native Americans from the Eastern tip of Long Island. The Montauk managed to extend their influence throughout New England, thanks to Long Island’s natural abundance of the polished seashells called “wampum” that served as their currency.

The Montauk people were a confederacy of Algonkian-speaking Indian tribes who lived on the eastern and central parts of what is now Long Island. Like other Algonkian tribes of that area, the Montauk depended largely on the cultivation of corn for their subsistence, in addition to hunting and fishing. Upon the arrival of Europeans in 1639, the Montauk were practically wiped out by disease. By 1659, the tribe that had once flourished throughout the northeast, numbered a mere 500 people. Today a few mixed-blood descendants remain on Long Island, where they are called the Shinnecock Indians. The eastern tip of the southern peninsula of Long Island is called Montauk Point in memory of those early inhabitants.

Springfield Gardens was originally known as “Spring Fields” because of its profuse system of natural ponds and creeks. These resources proved attractive to settlers, who first arrived in the 1640s. An irrigation system was initially used to distribute the ample supply of water to crops, and then incorporated into the City’s water system until the ponds became polluted. By 1700, Spring Fields was a small farm hamlet composed of a number of scattered homes assembled around dirt roads. In the mid-1800s, only about 2,000 residents inhabited the southeastern area of Queens, and because of its sparse population, Spring Fields suffered from a lack of basic services, such as sewers and utilities.

In the early 1900s, the Long Island Railroad built a station in Spring Fields, causing an impressive real estate boom with the attending public infrastructure improvements. By 1924, Spring Fields’ population had quadrupled; 5,000 residents lived in about 1,200 single-family homes. Dozens of additional streets were built during the 1920s and 1930s, as were hundreds of houses, causing the population to increase to approximately 15,000 by the late 1930s. The Post Office renamed the area ‘Springfield Gardens’ in 1927, and the Long Island Railroad renamed their station accordingly shortly thereafter.

Montauk Triangle is located at Montauk and Nellis Streets and 122nd Avenue in the southeastern section of Queens. The triangle, which features trees and stone curbs, is part of the Greenstreets program, a collaboration between Parks and the Department of Transportation that converts paved street properties into green spaces.