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.