Bldgblog wrote about NYC’s new Tree Museum, a creation of artist Katie Holten, which includes 100 selected trees between 138th Street and Mosholu Parkway, the stretch of boulevard that connects Manhattan to the parks of Northern Bronx. Bldgblog writes that each tree is labeled with its name in English, Spanish, and Latin, and tagged with a number to dial in order to hear that tree’s story. Holten selected professors, activists, geologists, and landscape architects to tell each “tree-story.” The artist Holten wrote to Bldgblog:
“Klaus Lackner (professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University and director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy) tells the story of the carbon cycle and his attempt to create a “fake plastic tree,” or air extractor, that would suck the CO2 out of the air and convert it into something we can put in a safe place. Eric Sanderson (a landscape ecologist based at the Bronx Zoo, and author of Mannahatta) needed a really old, native tree to talk about projecting the landscape backwards. I gave him No. 9, a beautiful American Elm outside Cardinal Hayes High School.
At the northern end of the Concourse, at 206th St, there’s a huge chunk of rock between two buildings; it’s like the side of a cliff. I had to give the tree there, No. 95, to Sid Horenstein, a geologist who recently retired from the American Museum of Natural History. He’s able to use the rock outcrop to explain the story of what the Concourse lies above—it was built on a ridge and that’s one of the main reasons the street was constructed here, because it was elevated and offered spectacular views of the countryside all around.”
Bldgblog notes that Majora Carter, an environmental justice activist and founder of Sustainable South Bronx, also recorded a “tree-story” and uses a honey locust to tell people: “You don’t have to leave your neighborhood to live in a better one, and trees are an important part of making that happen.” Landscape architects with the NYC Parks department also recorded stories.
Read the article, and check out the Tree Museum. For those not in NYC, you can also download audio files.
