Elegy for a holly tree

My parents bought a house in West Oak Lane in 1966. I wound up buying it from their estate in 2005, after living in Center City for over 20 years. And in all that time, there has been a holly tree on the corner.

The tree belonged to the corner house, two doors away from me.

A few weeks ago, that holly tree was cut down, along with an overgrown mulberry tree.

The holly tree was priceless to me, like an old friend. I feel the loss.

The holly tree was priceless to me, like an old friend.

My family moved to West Oak Lane from around South Street, in what is now called Graduate Hospital. The trees downtown were sporadic, but my mother regularly took me to Rittenhouse Square, before anybody called the neighborhood “Rittenhouse.”

When we first moved to West Oak Lane, there were so many trees that I thought we must be near a park. The neighborhood had a canopy of tall London plane trees, and both sides of our street were lined with these stately trunks. It was cooler in the summer than it had been in Center City.

We had a white Christmas our first year. Looking out the window with my mother, our tree-lined street looked like a Christmas card.

Over time, a blight killed most of the trees. The intersection near me, at North 20th Street and 72nd Avenue, still has a few London plane trees, a reminder of what our street used to look like. Look at them soon because they, too, have the blight, and are dying.

Yet the holly tree remained over the decades, growing taller each year. A long time ago, a previous owner of the corner house was offered $10,000 to dig up and relocate the tree, yet he didn’t want to sell it. The tree increased the value of the house and the block.

The holly tree wasn’t the block’s only greenery. A small evergreen my father planted in front of the house in the 1980s now reaches the second floor. It’s too big for me to decorate anymore. And, of course, there was the overgrown mulberry tree — until recently, that is.

The most recent owner of the corner house sold it a while back. The current owners are an LLC. Every few months there is a new tenant.

About three weeks ago, I heard buzz saws all day. When I came outside, I was shocked to see that the holly and mulberry trees were cut to the ground and the garden left denuded, looking like a wasteland. Did the owners even look at the trees?

There was a sign from the block captain on the side of the corner house asking that cars be moved before work could be done.

I tried to reach the owners of the corner house, but I couldn’t find contact information. Neither could our councilmember’s office.

When new residents move in, landmarks are often destroyed. This time, the landmarks were trees.

We had a mature, beautiful holly tree and mulberry tree. The mulberry could have been pruned if it was overgrown. Instead of caring for the trees, they were cut down.

I wanted to understand how this happened. I sent an email to my block captain and received no response. That weekend, I wrote a memo and passed it to my neighbors on both sides of the block.

The following week I met with my block captain, the block captain for the street that crosses the intersection, and other neighbors. They said the owners approached them about the garden. The corner had become an issue: The cross street block captain said that people had been having sex in the garden (I didn’t know that) and leaving condoms and trash that she would clean up. Apparently, the block captains didn’t question or offer input regarding what the LLC was doing with the garden.

My block captain told me that owners can do whatever they want with their property. It still seemed to me that the trees could have been pruned to make the garden more visible, which would have been less drastic. They didn’t have to kill the trees.

The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society distributes free street trees, and we can take advantage of that. We can have tall, leafy trees lining our block again, but that will take decades. With planning, we can avoid having roots invading our pipes. We still won’t have a lovely, mature holly tree.

Our shady corner is gone. We are no longer going to have squirrels running about on our block. Shortly after the trees were cut down, I found a dead bird on the pavement.

It hurts to look at the corner.

Cei Bell is a writer and artist living in West Oak Lane.