The Olmsted Tuliptree, Capitol Grounds

Frederick Law Olmsted planted more than 1,050 trees on the Capitol grounds and about 45 of them are still alive. This is the largest of the three tulip trees among the survivors. His General Plan for the grounds dates from 1874 and the planting ran on into the 1890s, so the tree is somewhere between about 130 and 150 years old, dated by the works rather than by the wood. It stands in Capitol Square along Northeast Drive, across from the Russell Senate Office Building, which is worth noticing because the building is the younger of the two. Russell opened in 1909, decades after the tree went into ground Olmsted had already landscaped. He was not decorating: his argument was that the Capitol looked smaller than it deserved on its bare hill, and the terraces and plantings were his answer to that, an architectural case made in trees. A tuliptree of this age is an unlikely thing to find on ground worked over as often as this. Terraces, a subway, an underground visitor centre, security lines and a century and a half of ceremonies have gone in around it, and it is among the few living things on the 274 acre campus that predate almost all of them. No tree level coordinate is published. The Architect of the Capitol names the drive and the building it faces, which is enough to find it on foot in a few minutes.