Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1909-01-27
HISTORIC CEDARS
NOW SACRIFICED
TREES OF LEBANON SENT TO MA
POLEoN BY kHEDIVE
OF EGYPT.
BROUGHT FROM PARIS AND
PLANTED IN FRONT OF
HOUSE.

New York, Jan. 19.-The juggernaut
OF New York's advancing apartment
houses has struck the vicinity of the
Jumel mansion, on Washington
Heights, and moved down the fine
cedars of Lebanon, which were given
to M. Jumel by Napoleon.
To the builder of an apartment
house tree is no doubt nothing more
than a tree. Is it in the way? Then
cut it down. Is not something finer
going up in its place? And where
long, scraggly branches and mourn
full, dark-colored foliage grew before,
will there not blossom halls lined
with Mexican onyx and new art?
But poets and painters and their
ilk have always loved the cedar of
Lebanon. It's very name was an Ara
bic word meaning strong and
stately" The Scriptures employed it
frequently as a symbol of power,
prosperity, and longevity.
The Jumel trees were young. They
| had lived only a century and a half,
and they might have gone on for
thousands of years, for they are cou-
sins of the seqoias and the big trees
of California. There were eighteen
when the apartment house builder APP
| peared ON the scene and put the axe
| to their roots. The people in charge
of the Jumel mansion protested, and
the work was finally stopped al
the moment when the axeman might
have been humming to himself:
| Take one more cedar from them all,
| Leaves five little cedars hanging Oh
| the wall.
| One of the trees has been trans
planted into the garden of the man
sion. and the park department has
been persuaded to take up some oil
the others and replant them in Kings
bridge park
The piece Of property on which the
trees stand was once part of the
Jumel estate. 1t is now part of q
city block lying directly south of the
mansion site. In the year 1915, M
Jumel was visiting in Paris and heard
| that a present of cedar trees had
been sent to Napoleon by the khedive
of Egypt. The trees had never beer
unpacked, and lay in the garden of the
Tuiltries, in bales, on which the roya
gardeners sprinkled water occasion
ally to keep the roots alive. M
| Jumel heard that they were to be
| burned, after they had been kept q
respectable time The emperor want
| ed to be able to say, if the khedive
ever asked him, how he was enjoying
| his trees. very much, indeed. They
are in the garden of the Tuileries and
we are getting a great deal of en-
! ioyment out of them M. Jumel, al
ter some delay, bought them, and
| brought them back to America tC
plant around the fishpond in the
front yard of his house, way out il
the country at 161st street Some
say that Napoleon presented the trees
to M. Jumel, but the above is be
lieved to be the correct story.
! Originally there were twenty-four
but NJ. Jumel planted them too close
together and some died. They stood
| in a rough circle, and grew up to be
handsome trees. Cedars of Lebanon
have an interesting manner of growth
The branches reach outward until
they clear the branches above them
and then grow upward in beautiful
| feathery plumes. The Jumel trees
have been viewed by botanists from
all over the world, and visitors trav
cling in America have often made
special point of seeing them.
| A number of the neighbors have
taken cuttings, and are trying to pre-
serve in their own yards some me
mento of this historic grove.
|