The East Capitol Street Elm

Official records rarely have a sense of humour, but the arborist who inspected this elm in May 2026 summed it up in the city's tree inventory as "A real thiccums!" The trunk earns it. On East Capitol Street, a few blocks east of the Capitol, it measures about 137 centimetres across at chest height, roughly 4.3 metres round. The same note carries the less cheerful news. The elm has been dying back since 2019, a broken hanging limb was taken down in May 2026, and the inspector rated its condition Fair rather than Good. It is a big old tree in decline, and the record says so plainly. Laser survey fields in the inventory give the crown a height of about 16 metres, modest for a trunk of this width. Its neighbours make the size easy to read. Within twenty metres stand two Princeton elms, a cultivar of American elm bred to resist Dutch elm disease, about 13 and 51 centimetres across, and a smaller American elm of about 48. None of them comes close. Capitol South Metro is about 800 metres away, and the Olmsted tuliptree on the Capitol grounds is roughly 600 metres west, so this elm fits easily into a walk around Capitol Hill. Garfield Park's big zelkova is about a kilometre south. The inventory is the only source for this elm, and it records no planting date. Nobody has dated it. If you know when East Capitol Street's elms went in, tell us.