Beating Isabel––

An Ailing Main Street Maple Comes Down

By Dottie Evans

It is a sad fact of life along Newtown’s historic Main Street that the old maples planted nearly two centuries ago are not going to live forever.

Newtown tree warden Mike McCarthy has explained that the true cause of their demise is not the coming of the sewer line or even the arborists’ chain saws that seem so brutally to finish them off.

One by one, they are succumbing to the effects of dry rot, disease, and dieback, and though their owners may be wishing for a miracle, nothing can reverse the effects of old age in a tree whose time has come.

Maples do not live as long as oaks, and even oaks that last 300 or 400 years eventually die.

The Cyrenius H. Booth Library at 25 Main Street recently took down one of its old maples, and a week ago, George Miller, owner of the Budd House at 50 Main Street, had a towering giant removed from his side yard.

It had stood inside the new bomanite sidewalk directly across the street from Edmond Town Hall. Today, a couple of gold and red chrysanthemums decorate its stump like a benediction.

“I figure this one was at least 200 years old,” said Bob Barnes, licensed arborist and owner of Bob’s Tree Service of Southbury.

Mr Barnes and his workmen spent the better part of a full day on September 18, sawing off the giant limbs, mulching the branches and leaves, felling the huge trunk and sawing it into chunks for removal.

To any passerby who happened to examine the fallen tree up close, it was clear the trunk and even the largest branches were totally hollowed out by rot. The tree had been supporting itself by a mere two-inch thick shell of outer bark surrounding the interior cavity.

When the workers cut through one of the limbs, they were showered with water trapped inside the interior. A worrisome fact was that the tree had been leaning at an angle in the direction of Mr Miller’s home.

“I had been thinking we should take it down. When [Hurricane] Isabel was coming, I called Bob and said, can we do it right now before the storm gets here.”

Mr Miller did not want the high winds of Isabel to blow the tree down onto the roof of the home that he and his wife Shane purchased in 1999.

A Landmark Victorian Mansion

Built in 1869 by Henry Beers Glover and listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Glover House, the Millers’ residence is also known as the Budd House, after Florence Beecher Budd. Ms Budd lived her entire life there and died in 1977.

It is one of Main Street’s signature Victorian houses of the Second Empire style, and it boasts the kind of bizarre and spooky architectural features that were made famous by New Yorker magazine cartoonist Charles Addams. These include a mansard roof with decorative slate tiles and arched windows, a deep, pillared front porch, and three imposing stories.

The house was included on the walking/historic house tour of the Newtown Holiday Festival 2000, and its backyard garden was one of the stops on the Newtown Historical Society’s Ninth Annual Historic Home and Garden Tour held this last July. It also was the site of what the Millers might say was the “First Annual” Main Street Progressive Potluck Supper, held in June and attended by nearly 80 Main Street residents.

Mr Miller has been working on restoring the vintage horse barn that came with the house. Come December, the Millers will have lived at 50 Main Street four years. They feel it is a privilege as well as a joy to live on the historic property, and they have welcomed friends and family in its spacious rooms or on the lawn under the overarching trees.

“I feel like I am more of a caretaker than an owner, that I am responsible for what happens to this place,” Mr Miller commented.

“At least now, we’ll have a little more sunlight in the house,” he added, as he stood by respectfully, watching the old tree come down.