The English Elm of Fort Greene Park

Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux are remembered for Central Park and Prospect Park, but some of their planting still stands in Fort Greene. This English elm, according to the coverage of NYC Parks' 2024 Great Trees list, was planted as part of their original design for the park, and the city now counts it among its Great Trees. The Olmsted and Vaux work here dates from the 1860s, which puts the elm at about 160 years, give or take a couple of decades. Treat that as a derivation rather than a record: nobody has published a planting year for this particular tree, and one writer who went looking called the date simply unknown. Its size is in a similar state. A blogger who walked the park counted 760 trees, 37 of them elms, and judged this one about 80 feet tall and the largest in the park bar one rival, with a trunk he guessed at ten feet across. That is an eyeball estimate, and it does not match other figures in circulation, so we print no trunk size as fact. If you bring a tape measure, the number is yours to give us. Look for it on the eastern side of the park, along its Tree Trail; our pin puts you in that half of the park rather than at the trunk.