This giant sequoia predates the seven-storey bank building that now looms over it by decades, and it nearly lost that seniority battle anyway. Around 2012, plans for the Limmattalbahn, a new tram line through Zurich's Altstetten district, threatened to require felling the roughly 120-year-old tree to make room for the widened road. Julius Baer, the private bank whose Altstetten offices had been built around the sequoia rather than the other way round, spent years in negotiation with the tram line's operators rather than accept the loss, eventually reaching a settlement in which the route was adjusted and the tree kept its ground. It stands today nearly 15 metres tall, still growing on a stretch of Hohlstrasse that has since gone through a full redevelopment masterplan, approved by Zurich's city council in 2026, which explicitly names the sequoia as a feature to preserve rather than remove. A bank saving a tree from a tram line is not the story anyone would predict for one of Zurich's oldest giant sequoias, and it is not the kind of protection any nature reserve or heritage listing arranged. It happened because the people who owned the ground next to it decided the tree was worth the years of negotiation, which is its own kind of durability.
From people who stood here
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Getting there
Hohlstrasse, Altstetten, Zurich
You can recognise it as the sequoia standing hard against the seven-storey bank building on Hohlstrasse, about 15 metres tall. It is visible from the street; the ground itself is the bank's.
Visible from Hohlstrasse; stands on private bank premises but directly beside the public street and sidewalk
Zurich Altstetten railway station, short walk
Sources
Where the facts on this page come from. The story was written with AI from these sources, and readers who know the tree correct it.