by Neil Caudle

Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm. By Thomas J. Campanella. Yale University Press, 272 pages, $35.

For generations, the American elm cast a spell over New England. In town after town, civic groups planted elms by the thousands, and the trees grew tall and strong, shading streets and town centers under soaring canopies of green.

Right: Two views of the same elm tree in front of Old East Hall on the Carolina campus. Top: early 1900s. Bottom: 2003. Click to enlarge.

Thomas Campanella, assistant professor of city and regional planning, tells the story of how elms transplanted from swamps during the Colonial period took root in public squares and spread their branches over historical events. When environmental idealism swept the region during the nineteenth century, the elm claimed a leading role in urban planning and design. Architecture "deferred" to the elms, which veiled and flattered buildings, concealing their flaws. The region's reformers embraced the elm as an emblem of well-being, a means for reversing the spiritual poverty of urban life. Yankee ideals of rectitude and order found inspiration in the uplifting influence of elms.

But the elm, a loner by nature, could not survive its own prosperity. During the 1930s, a fungal agent imported in foreign logs hitched a ride with the tiny elm leaf beetle, which rapidly spread disease from tree to tree throughout New England. In the span of one generation, Dutch elm disease stripped away the canopies and exposed Yankee towns to the glare of the sun. Today, disease-resistant varieties of the tree have made a modest comeback, but the days when elms lined the streets are probably gone forever. "The ubiquity of the elm was its downfall," Campanella writes. "The tree was loved to death."

Neil Caudle is editor of Endeavors magazine.