Revival of 'Elm Street, U.S.A.', begins one tree at a time
University Gazette
April 27, 2005

BUDDING FUTURE Thomas Campanella, assistant professor of city and regional
planning and author of “Republic of Shade” (left), stands with Thomas Bythell,
University arborist, next to a newly planted disease-resistant elm tree between
Old East and New East.


The Great Depression produced powerful images that still linger in American
consciousness — from soup lines to apple stands to train-hopping hobos to the
drought that turned the once-green heartland into a Dust Bowl.

But when Tom Campanella thinks of the devastation wrought in that decade, the
first thing that comes to his mind is the blight called Dutch elm disease carried by
a burrowing beetle.


The disease produced a fungus that spread through the tree’s vascular system, clogging and killing limbs, then the trunk
itself.  Over the next three decades, it killed hundreds of thousands of the trees, decimating “Elm Streets” in small towns
across the land.  Campanella, an assistant professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning, wrote a book about
the elm titled “Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm,” which was published in 2003 by Yale University
Press.  Campanella, who grew up in New York City, said he fell in love with the tree as a little boy when he saw an
illuminated painting of an American elm in the American Museum of Natural History.

The painting showed a row of the trees lining both sides of the street in a New England town.  The branches rose from the
trunks in the shape of a fountain spray, Campanella said, the upper branches coming together to form a kind of archway
reminiscent of a Gothic cathedral.  And now, thanks to Campzanella’s efforts, the elm will be part of the future landscape
here at Carolina.  This spring, six disease-resistant elm saplings were set in the ground on the west side of New East.
The trees were raised by Roger Holloway of Riveredge Farms and arrived on campus as part of the same shipment bound
for Washington, D.C., to be planted on the long block of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.  Pennsylvania
Avenue ended up with 88 of the trees, the University with 12.

An allee of elms
The University got the trees because Campanella — who knew Holloway through the writing of his book — was able to
persuade the tree grower to sell them.  But the planting of the trees on campus required a collaboration of a different sort
between Campanella and Tom Bythell, the University arborist, and grounds director Kirk Pelland.  “He motivated me,”
said Bythell, who as it turns out has as powerful a connection to the elm as Campanella does.  Before coming to Carolina,
Bythell said, he worked on the campus of Princeton University where the elm remains as ubiquitous as the southern oak is
here.  Much of his work at Princeton was split between doctoring the elm trees to keep them alive and climbing the dead
elms to cut them down.  As the arborist here, Bythell had to figure out where the trees should go on campus, which led to
the idea of establishing a small allee of six trees along the west side of New East near, but not along, Cameron Avenue.

An allee is a formal design of planting trees to line both sides of a path or drive, which is how the elms were planted across
the past three centuries to produce the countless “Elm Streets” in small towns everywhere.  Four of the other trees were
planted to fill in the empty spots in a row of old elms in front of McIver residence hall.  The remaining two trees were planted
as replacement trees across campus, Bythell said.

The trees now stand about 20 feet high and are about five inches around at their base.  At five years old, they are still too
small to reveal their future splendor, Bythell said.  Bythell said the planting of the elms was done in the same spirit that
members of the Task Force on Landscape Heritage and Plant Diversity did their work.  “We are so forward thinking with
trees,” Bythell said.  “You and I are not going to really enjoy these elms, but maybe I’ll be able to bring my grandchild
here and tell him, ‘I did that.’

With its sweeping umbrella-like structure to its branches, there is no other tree that can compare to the majesty of the elm,
Bythell said.  But, he said, “I’m not interested in turning UNC into Princeton.  The dominant trees on this campus are oaks
and that is the way it will stay. But these elms will make a wonderful accent.”

‘Verdant parasols’
Campanella said he felt compelled to write the book to document the dominant place that the elm has held in the American
urban landscape.  The elm, Campanella said, is the centerpiece of the larger environmental awakening of 1840s, an awakening
that inspired the works of Hudson River painters and helped to spur the transcendentalist writings of Emerson and Thoreau.
In the book jacket, Campanella calls the elm “elegant and highly adaptable” and the “essential feature of America’s cultural
landscape for more than a century, forming great verdant parasols above” that would lend its name to streets all across the
nation.”

Long before Johnny Appleseed set foot in Ohio, New Haven, Conn., had James Hillhouse whose extensive elm-planting
campaign transformed the city into one of the most celebrated in 19th-century America, Campanella said in his book.
American elms had been planted in the city as early as 1685, but it was in 1759 that Hillhouse planted the rows of trees
around the market square.  The trees grew rapidly and may even have helped save the town during the Revolutionary War,
Campanella wrote.  “According to legend, General George Garth, commander of the British forces invading New Haven,
refrained from razing the town in July 1779 because he was so moved by its sylvan beauty. ‘It is too pretty to burn,’ he
reportedly muttered, and led his men away.”