#2. VIEW FROM THE ENGLISH ELM
I wish I could climb the grandfather tree (grandmother?) in the Park’s west end. It’s 135 feet tall and at least 300 years old, so older than the nation. I want to know more about what it has witnessed at its feet.
Things that I’m sure it saw:
• Minetta Creek flowing toward the Hudson River
• Lenape hunting parties
• Dutch farms turned over to freed African born slaves
• An English nobleman riding over his estate
• The Herring farm after the Revolution
• 20,000 burials of yellow fever victims and poor New Yorkers
• Militias training on the parade ground
• The gallows where Rose Butler was hanged for arson
• Bob Dylan and Joan Baez checking into the Washington Square Hotel
And more, I’m sure. Wish I could tap its arboreal data bank.
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