A WILLOW GREW IN BROOKLYN HEIGHTS (1938)
Brownstone Detectives investigates the history of our clients’ homes.
The story you are about to read was composed from research conducted in the course of one of those investigations.
Do you know the history of YOUR house?
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(In September of 1938, one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to hit Long Island, New York, “The Long Island Express,” wrecked havoc on the peninsula and much of Brooklyn, as well. In addition to killing 682 people and damaging or destroying more than 57,000 homes (causing property losses of $4.7 billion in today’s dollars), the hurricane knocked down innumerable trees. One of the more famous trees to lose its life in that storm was a willow tree of unknown age which sat in the yard of Brooklyn Heights’s No. 57 Willow Street. Some claimed that it was this tree that gave the street its name.)
From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Mon., 31 October 1938 (by columnist Maxwell Hamilton):
“At the rate timber fell around us during the Hollywood hurricane last September (ed.’s note-“The Long Island Express” was one of the deadliest and most destructive cyclones to strike Long Island, New York), it would have been a flagrant case of playing favorites to select any one particular crashing tree and honor it with front-page billing. And yet, if the evidence gathered by our secret agents is worth any salt at all, it would appear that we all missed up on one leafy upheaval that was genuine news. We refer to the uprooting of the big tree which used to bloom at 57 Willow St.
“We have it right from the soil that that tree was the original willow from which Willow St. got its name. You’ve probably seen that particular tree a hundred times. It stood in a neat little yard, and no sooner did we learn of the legend surrounding it than we were on our motorcycle and dashing to 57 to interview Mrs. Harold Szold. Although, technically, she and her husband, as residents there, owned the ill-fated willow, Mrs. Szold said there must have been hundreds of folks on the Heights who liked to refer to the old bush as ‘our tree.'”
REQUIESCAT IN PACE
“Actually, Mrs. Szold told us she doesn’t think the tree that fell was the original Willow St. willow. But, of the experts? Take the WPA, for example. The government boys had a picture of the Szold house, with tree, in their guide-book, ‘New York Panorama,’ and, while they didn’t come right out and say so, they more or less nudged the reader into believing that that was the tree, all right.
“Mrs. Szold said that she and her husband, a banker, weren’t particularly shocked by the tree’s demise, their feeling being that the willow was ‘like an old person with a bad heart’ and riding for a fall anyhow. Before the storm, she said, they had the best tree surgeons in the business come in and feel the willow’s pulse, but the docs just shook their heads and muttered to themselves. The end, it seemed, was near.
“The Szolds showed us letters of condolence they’d received from all over the world after the storm, and they reported that even strangers had come to the door with hat in hand to express sympathy at their loss. It was as though a member of the family had passed on, Mrs. S. said, a fact she attributed to the willow’s beauty.
“Mrs. Szold told us that her willow hadn’t always been in their yard, but had been originally on the property of Norman Elliot, at 55 Willow St., next door. The tree had just up and run over into the Szold yard, despite all efforts to keep it on its own side of the fence. Naturally, that sent us scurrying to see the Elliots.
“Mrs. Elliot was bearing her bereavement bravely, although she admitted she and her husband felt pretty badly about the willow. She confirmed the fact that it once was in the Elliot yard, but, despite cables and fences, it kept tugging to get over to the Szolds’ plot, where it could find a place in the sun.
“One of the grimmest things about the tree’s collapse, Mrs. Elliot said, was that–in its recumbent position–it offered a splendid playground for the neighborhood kids. The latter made so much noise the day of the storm, scampering all over the tree playing Tarzan, that the Elliots were unable to concentrate on their bridge game. Even two cops and a watchman couldn’t cope with the law of the jungle.
THE WILLOW AND THE FIELDS
“If anyone would know, we were told, whether the Szold tree had been the original Willow St. willow, Mrs. Edward Fields would. Accordingly, we dropped in at 104 Columbia Heights for a chat with her.
“Mrs. Fields also referred to the deceased as ‘our tree,’ and she was quite certain it was THE tree. Her husband is now 78, she explained, and his great-great aunt lived to be almost 100 in the house at 135 Willow St. Those were the days when the street was just a winding alley and the tree in the Szolds’ yard was a landmark even then. Her husband, Mrs. Fields told us, was broken-hearted over its stormy end.
“We came away from all these interviews considerably more sobered than we’d been when we started. For, for some reason or other, we’ve come under the spell of this arboreal calamity. We find ourselves brooding over it and thinking about it and stopping strangers in the streets.
“Have you heard?” we ask. “Our tree, it’s…it’s dead.”
POSTSCRIPT
Was the willow tree at No. 57 Willow Street as old as was claimed? And was it the tree that give Willow street its name?
If Mrs. Fields was correct and the great-great aunt of her husband (who was 78 at the time in 1938) was alive when the tree was a landmark, then that would put the tree’s age in 1935 at around 128 years old. If she were old enough to have remembered the tree, that would have added on at least 10-15 years, making the tree, in 1935 (128 + 15) 143 years old. If the tree was 143 years old in 1935, that would place the birth of that willow tree approximately within the year 1792.
The house at No. 57 Willow Street was reportedly constructed as early as 1824. Even if our figures above are off, it makes it unlikely that a pre-existing willow tree would have survived the building of a home on its lot. Additionally, and this appears to be the key figure here, a point unmentioned in the story above – or in our calculations – is the fact that the average lifespan of a willow tree is relatively short. In fact, although a willow in the perfect setting and climate can live, at most, up to 75 years, most willows live closer to 50 years.
Although a fanciful thought (perhaps one that gave Heights residents of the 1930s and before much comfort), the idea that the willow – existent up to that time within the yard of No. 57 Willow Street – was the original tree that gave Willow Street its name, is a highly unlikely notion.
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”
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Brownstone Detectives is an historic property research agency. Our mission is to document and save the histories of our clients’ homes. From our research, we produce our celebrated House History Books and House History Reports. Contact us today to begin discovering the history of your home.
