The Great Elm of Central Park West

Central Park once had roughly 500 American elms along its western edge. By 1985, a New York Times survey counted 23 left, and this is one of them. It stands right at the park's edge on Central Park West and 77th Street, directly across from the American Museum of Natural History, wider than it is tall: NYC Parks measures it at just under 51 feet high with a 55 foot canopy. Dutch elm disease reached New York in the 1930s and worked through the city for decades, killing elms faster than anyone could replant them. This one kept standing while its neighbours came down one by one, close enough to the street that passersby now call it, without much competition, the most beautiful tree on the block. Nobody has dated it precisely. What is documented is its survival: officially designated one of the city's Great Trees, standing beside a statue of Alexander von Humboldt, who spent his career cataloguing exactly this kind of specimen. No planting record narrows the guess further than a century or more, so that wide range is what the story states rather than a false precise number. Walk in from the Museum of Natural History subway stop and it is the first tree inside the park, an entrance marker planted long before anyone thought to protect it.