This was the General Noble Redwood Tree House – a 50-foot section of a 2,000 year-old giant sequoia tree. This idea was conceived as an impressive government exhibit for the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago.
The tree was cut in the General Grant National Park – which is now Kings Canyon National Park in California. A team of twenty cutters worked for seven days, fifty feet above the ground, to cut the 26-foot diameter tree.
Workers then hollowed out the stump, and cut the tree into some 2-3 dozen sections, which would be reassembled on the site of the exposition – complete with an interior circular staircase!
In 1894 the tree was moved again to the grounds of the Agriculture Building, on the Mall in Washington, DC. It was then that the structure was made waterproof with the addition of a peaked roof and four dormer windows, and covered with redwood shingles.
The tree house remained on the mall until 1932, when it was placed in storage at the Agriculture's Experimental Farm in Arlington, Virginia. In 1940 the Farm was transferred to the Army for part of the Pentagon grounds, and the tree was likely burned at that time.
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This was the General Noble Redwood Tree House – a 50-foot section of a 2,000 year-old giant sequoia tree. This idea was conceived as an impressive government exhibit for the 1893 World's Colombian Exposition in Chicago.
The tree was cut in the General Grant National Park – which is now Kings Canyon National Park in California. A team of twenty cutters worked for seven days, fifty feet above the ground, to cut the 26-foot diameter tree.
Workers then hollowed out the stump, and cut the tree into some 2-3 dozen sections, which would be reassembled on the site of the exposition – complete with an interior circular staircase!
In 1894 the tree was moved again to the grounds of the Agriculture Building, on the Mall in Washington, DC. It was then that the structure was made waterproof with the addition of a peaked roof and four dormer windows, and covered with redwood shingles.
The tree house remained on the mall until 1932, when it was placed in storage at the Agriculture's Experimental Farm in Arlington, Virginia. In 1940 the Farm was transferred to the Army for part of the Pentagon grounds, and the tree was likely burned at that time.
Oh, gee, what a surprise it ended in tragedy.
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