Hackensack, NJ Community Message Boards
General Category => Hackensack Discussion => Topic started by: BLeafe on May 30, 2013, 04:10:29 PM
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You've probably seen lots of articles in the paper about Teaneck's historic giant red oak tree at the northeast corner of Cedar Lane and Palisade Ave: it's coming down, it's been saved, it's been declared historic, it's sick, and now it's coming down for real.
Here's the latest:
http://www.northjersey.com/community/209459961_End_of_an_era__Teaneck_Red_Oak_deemed_hazardous.html?page=all
http://teaneck.patch.com/articles/teaneck-red-oak-tree-update
Since its demise is imminent, I took some pictures today while I still can.
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the wood in that tree is worth a fortune.
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Just like the demo contractor made a fortune from the old floors and beams when they took down Packards.
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The lumberyards prefer straight and tall trunks, which is what you often get in an old woods like Borg's Woods. This Teaneck tree has neither, look at the picture. It instead grew a very wide crown with low-branching major limbs, exactly like trees do that mature in an open field or parkland setting. That area must have been pastureland 100 years ago, it was not a mature forest setting.
Northern Red Oak is a valuable hardwood and currently farmed for hardwood floors, but this particular tree offers little more than scrap wood. Plus it is hollow in the middle and infested with termites, according to reports I read. Almost all old trees are hollow in the middle and infested with termites, so that's not unexpected.
I need to take a circumference reading on the great Cottonwood in Foschini Park, it's been a couple years since I did that. Last I checked, it was 19' circumference, and might be topping 20' by now. Some effort should be made to safeguard that tree, landscape around it, etc.
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I just spoke to someone at the Puffin Foundation and the tree is scheduled to come down on Friday morning, weather permitting (it's supposed to rain).
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This was the day that the tree was to finally be taken down and it was - appropriately - a miserable day.
The takedown was to start at 9am. I went there about an hour later when I thought (incorrectly) that the drizzling had stopped. I had to use my wipers, so my headlights were on, but the drizzle almost stopped by the time I started shooting.
It picked up again after about a half-hour. Because I had to point upward for most of the shots, I couldn't keep the lens dry, so I left just after the Cedar Lane overhang branches came down.
When I got back to my car, the headlights were still on - barely - and the car wouldn't start.
Something was wrong with my cell, so I couldn't call AAA. I walked back to the site and got the County cop on duty to contact the Teaneck PD, which sent a car to check out the problem. He called the dispatcher to call AAA. That all took about an hour.
Like I said - it was a miserable day.
The pix:
1. Cedar Lane was closed between Palisade Ave and Queen Anne Rd. This was the scene looking down the Lane towards Hackensack.
2. Sawdust shower
3. Separation
4. Liftoff
5. End of the line
6. I walked up Cedar Lane to take this shot because it gave me a chance to re-create...........
7. ..........THIS shot, which I took in 1957 - one of the first pictures I ever took.
8. Pretty appropriate name for a tree-taker-downer company, no?
9. This was the last shot I took as I was leaving (after the Cedar Lane overhang branches were removed). I was going to return later in the afternoon, but it poured for hours. I wonder if they finished the job in all that rain.
10. On a slightly less-miserable note, I made this HDR image yesterday to document the tree's final night as the sentinel of Cedar Lane. It's going to be a pretty boring view without that tree.
I'll post the "after" shot when I get around to it...............no need to rush, right?
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I'm no expert but I didn't see much rot in those cross sections. I'm guessing that tree had another 50 years, at least. They probably could have just pruned the limbs they were worried about and left the rest of it alone.
Did you take any shots of the stump so we can count the rings? Did they grind it yet?
Sorry it was such a rough day. Thanks!
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Mr. Editor, you are 100% correct.
Now I am convinced that professional tree experts are NEVER to be trusted. They are creating havoc from the Teaneck Pride Tree to Borg's Woods. Here's the down-low on tree experts: Any time they are called out to evaluate a tree by the County or a town, their evaluation becomes a matter of public record. So if the tree or a limb falls and causes damage or God forbid it hurts or kills someone, there is a public record of the tree evaluation that can be researched, and both the town and the tree expert can be sued. So no matter what the tree expert really thinks, they are going to prescribe cutting the tree if there is even the slightest imperfection, flaw, or weakness noted in the report. It's all about covering their "you know what" and protecting their client from lawsuits.
This means that the act of calling out a tree expert to evaluate a tree is usually a death sentence for the tree. It's a sign of the times, but I will refrain from digressing into my disgust of the legal and insurance professions.
And here's the real irony. It's perfectly healthy trees with broad crowns and lots of leaves that are most likely to uproot in storms. Why? Because there is a lot of leaf surface area to catch the wind. The Editor's solution to prune would have reduced the leaf surface area of the tree, and of particular limbs that were affected by lightning damage (I saw them)
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This was in today's paper. The first picture was front-and-center on page A-1 (I included The Record's logo), the article was on pages L-1 and L-6, and the second picture was on L-6 (click pix to enlarge):
Last stand for Teaneck's historic red oak
Monday, June 10, 2013 Last updated: Tuesday June 11, 2013, 2:29 PM
BY DENISA R. SUPERVILLE
STAFF WRITER
The Record
TEANECK – The stately red oak on Cedar Lane, once registered as the fourth largest in the state and which attracted a legion of devoted admirers over the years, was cut down on Monday.
It was between 250 and 300 years old.
Tree cutters from Hawthorne-based Downes Tree Service spent hours in driving rain, dismantling the tree, limb by limb, finally finishing the task around 5 p.m.
Three years ago, a township-hired arborist concluded that the tree could live for several more decades. But by the end of the day Monday, a moss-covered stump of nearly 3 feet tall was all that remained on the gassy knoll on Cedar Lane where the oak once stood.
Bergen County, which was responsible for taking care of the tree, decided after several reviews in the last few months, that the tree was suffering from decay and termite damage and posed a risk to pedestrians and motorists who travel busy Cedar Lane and Palisade Avenue, near the township’s downtown.
When the final piece of the trunk was removed — a portion that weighed 20,000 pounds — it appeared to vindicate the county’s concerns: The log contained a hollow wide enough to fit one of the tree cutters.
“We both have great regret to know that that beautiful tree would no longer be part of our community,” said Gladys Miller-Rosenstein, executive director of The Puffin Foundation, one of the tree’s champions.
“I know the foundation tried its hardest to find a way that we could save the tree. The only thing we were able to do was to work on the cloning to give us something for the future,” she added, referring to the efforts to preserve the tree’s lineage.
Miller-Rosenstein said she and husband, Perry, the foundation’s president, were too distraught on Monday to visit the site.
“We didn’t have the heart to go there,” she said.
But many residents braved the foul weather to watch the last stand of a tree, widely admired for its canopy and described over the years as “fabulous,” “majestic,” “a gift,” “a beautiful specimen,” and a “living witness to history.”
“It’s only fitting that this is a very cloudy, overcast day,” said resident Marty Singer, who was taking pictures. “Nature is crying because we are taking down one of its gems.”
The oak’s age and its prominent location on the site of the former Samuel Campbell farmhouse, which once stretched from the Hackensack River to the Hudson River, are among the reasons why residents have fought hard over the years to save it from the ax.
When it was awarded a historic designation earlier this year — an honor not normally bestowed on plants — the Township Council noted that “the tree was standing before the birth of our nation and before George Washington’s retreat over the Hackensack River at Historic New Bridge Landing.”
Eugene Coleman, chairman of the historic preservation commission and a longtime admirer, said:
“It’s such a loss,” he said. “It’s a hole in the landscape.”
Measured in 2010, the oak was found to be 80 to 85 feet tall, close to 200 feet wide. The trunk was listed as 70 inches in diameter and 18½ feet in circumference.
Both foreseeable and unforeseeable events led to its eventual demise.
A road widening project on Cedar Lane nearly two decades ago, claimed 40 percent of its root system. A five-year-old lightning strike severely scarred the tree’s trunk, but because it was not attended to properly, water settled in the voids, causing the tree to rot.
After last year’s Superstorm Sandy, the county took an inventory of its trees, examining the Teaneck oak among them. A series of studies led certified tree experts to the conclusion that the tree posed a threat to pedestrians and motorists and should be cut down.
“It’s not a health issue,” William Comery, the consultant who authored the report repeated on Monday. “It’s a risk issue.”
The news was greeted with disbelief by those that had fought so hard to save the tree over the years, including Democratic Teaneck Sen. Loretta Weinberg, whose husband, Irwin, led a group of residents nearly three decades ago to save it from a developer.
The Puffin Foundation in 2010 gave the county $100,000 donation to take care of the tree in perpetuity. Perry Rosenstein said Monday that the foundation also gave $200,000 to Congregation Netivoh Shalom, the synagogue which owns the property where the tree was located.
Dave King, a climber with Downes who manned a white bucket truck, cranked his chainsaw chain shortly after 9:20 a.m. to cut the first branch of the day, one hanging over Cedar Lane.
From there, the nine men worked almost non-stop, with those on the street collecting the fallen branches and feeding them into the wood chipper.
“We don’t get any pleasure from taking down a historic tree like this,” said Anthony Stellatos, one of the foremen on the site. “They called on us to take it down because we are equipped to do so.”
Weinberg, whose family has a special connection to the tree, lamented the loss.
“It’s been wonderful that so many folks were involved in keeping the tree going as long as possible, and then trying to find ways to propagate it, she said, expressing her gratitude to the synagogue and The Puffin Foundation “for all they have done to love a grand old tree — a living witness to history.”
Email: superville@northjersey.com
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1, 2 - Before and after
3 - My eye-level view of the stump, as seen from the Cedar Lane sidewalk
4 - There's a very small retaining wall next to the sidewalk. This is the shot I got by standing on that wall and holding the camera as high as I could over my head.
You can see that some clown has already defaced the horizontal surface of the stump. When I got there, a man was in the process of building a fence around the stump, as you can see from the tools and fencing material.
Rings are visible near the bark. I made this image nice and clickably-big so that its age can be calculated using a little counting and a lot of weird extrapolation.
Good luck with that and let us know what you come up with!
On another note, Neal Rosenstein - the VP of the Puffin Foundation - asked me to let you all know that "artists and others can arrange to have pieces of the tree by contacting us here at Puffin. 201 836 3400."
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That hole in the center was much smaller than I expected. Really, it wasn't in that bad shape at all.
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New info and photos:
http://bergencountyhistory.org/forums/index.php/topic,3093.msg4173.html#new
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Trunk found:
http://bergencountyhistory.org/forums/index.php/topic,3093
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Thanks for posting those photos. The bottom few say it all, those look like trunk sections taken at various heights. No rot. The limbs had no rot even at the bases. It was in much better condition than everyone thought. Even the very stump had only a small hollow area. This was truly a case of bureaucrats, real dumb-as-hell bureaucrats, killing a landmark tree.
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If anyone's interested, I added two more photo posts to this topic on the BCHS site after I photographed the milling of the final two huge branches of this tree on Sunday at a mill in Westwood.
http://bergencountyhistory.org/forums/index.php/topic,3093
Blood was spilled! :o
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WANT A PIECE OF THE TREE?
From the Puffin Foundation site:
Calling All Artisans, Wood Workers, and Craftsmen to Recycle and Reuse the Teaneck Red Oak Tree
Tuesday, October 7th & Thursday, October 9th, 2014
Between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
The Department of Parks, in partnership with the Puffin Foundation, wishes to find a second life for the celebrated Teaneck Red Oak tree announcing an “All-Call” to artisans, wood workers, and craftsmen to recycle and reuse the sections of the Red Oak that were saved after it was taken down last summer.
Sections of the tree were cut into milled lumber at a sawmill and segments of the large tree trunk and limbs were set aside until a new home could be found. While a good portion of the tree was disposed of due to its decayed condition, usable portions were saved for a future life.
The Department of Parks has scheduled two pick-up days for people to select and take the wood in their personal vehicles. The pickup days are Tuesday, October 7th and Thursday, October 9th, 2014 The locations are:
• Rochelle Park, at the Saddle River County Park. This storage area is located on Lotz Lane, Rochelle Park. It is located across from the Rochelle Park Swim Club. Uncut tree trunk and limbs are available at this location.
• Mahwah, at the Campgaw Mountain County Park. The entrance to the park is via Fike Road off of Campgaw Road. This entrance is north of the Bergen County Law and Public Safety Institute. Milled wood from the tree is available at this location.
* Signs will be placed directing people to the pick-up areas.
On both days, wood can be picked up between the hours of 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Bergen County Department of Parks staff will assist visitors in cutting and moving wood into their private vehicles.
In June 2013 the old Teaneck Red Oak, located at Cedar Lane and Palisades Avenue, in the Township of Teaneck, was removed by the Bergen County Department of Parks. The removal of the tree confirmed analysis by a licensed tree expert who recommended its removal as it had significant wood decay and was a risk to the public.
http://www.puffinfoundation.org/about-us/foundation-news-a-blog/674-calling-all-artisans-wood-workers-and-craftsmen-to-recycle-and-reuse-the-teaneck-red-oak-tree.html