The Hangman's Elm

This elm is one of the oldest living things on Manhattan Island, and almost everything colorful ever said about it is unproven. Its nickname comes from a folk legend that traitors and criminals were hanged from its branches during and after the American Revolution, a story with no supporting court or newspaper record; the earliest known references to it as a hanging tree only appear in print in the late 19th century, generations after the events they describe. What is documented is its age: the New York City Parks Department measured it at 310 years old in 1989, later revising that to a more cautious more than 300 years, with some accounts pushing the figure to 346. It stands at the northwest corner of Washington Square, a plot of land that served as a potter's field and public execution ground in the early 1800s, close enough to the tree that a real 1820 hanging nearby, of Rose Butler for arson, may be the seed of fact the legend grew from. The tree survived a 2012 park renovation that construction crews came close to damaging.