Tom Campanella Publishes History of the Elm

	Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm By Thomas J. Campanella. Yale University Press 2003 For generations, the American elm cast a spell over New England. In town after town, civic groups planted elms by the thousands, and the trees grew tall and strong, shading streets and town centers under soaring canopies of green.
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Assistant Professor Thomas Campanella tells the story of how elms transplanted from swamps during the Colonial period took root in public squares and spread their branches over historical events. When environmental idealism swept the region during the nineteenth century, the elm claimed a leading role in urban planning and design.  Architecture "deferred" to the elms, which veiled and flattered buildings, concealing their flaws.  The region's reformers embraced the elm as an emblem of well-being, a means for reversing the spiritual poverty of urban life.  Yankee ideals of rectitude and order found inspiration in the uplifting influence of elms. But the elm, a loner by nature, could not survive its own prosperity.  During the 1930s, a fungal agent imported in foreign logs hitched a ride with the tiny elm leaf beetle, which rapidly spread disease from tree to tree throughout New England.  In the span of one generation, Dutch elm disease stripped away the canopies and exposed Yankee towns to the glare of the sun.  Today, disease-resistant varieties of the tree have made a modest comeback, but the days when elms lined the streets are probably gone forever. "The ubiquity of the elm was its downfall," Campanella writes. "The tree was loved to death."

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Campanella's Shade Shines - Boston Sunday Globe Review
Boston Globe named Thomas Campanella book’s -- Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm --
one of the "nine best nonfiction titles of the year."

"2003: A Road Map to the Best - fiction and non-fiction"
by Michael Kenney

Thomas J. Campanella explored New England's main streets to chronicle, in ''Republic of Shade,"
the rise and fall of the iconic American elm.  The story is told with authority and charm.  The elms,
Campanella writes, were ''a fragment of wild nature" that, planted along city streets, ''formed the most
expansive urban forest ever planted" -- and defined New England well into the last century.

The article appeared in the Sunday Globe book section on December 7th (2003).
Michael Kenney regularly reviews for the Globe.

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New East Elm

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New East recently gained a new leafy neighbor, a sapling American elm planted in front of the building's Cameron Street façade.  The elm is a specially selected "502" clone from the "American Liberty" series developed in New Hampshire by the Elm Research Institute, and has proven resistance to Dutch elm disease.  The tree was donated to DCRP by Bruce Carley, an elm expert in Acton, Massachusetts who has been working to bring the much-missed tree back to America's streets and parks. Carley maintains a comprehensive Web site on the tree, and was featured in Tom Campanella's recent history of the elm, Republic of Shade (Yale, 2003).

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Watch It Grow!

Two views of the same elm tree in front of Old East Hall on the Carolina campus. Top: early 1900s. Bottom: 2003.