Stumped by the Archives

Took the Religion of Trees students to the University Archives today, to learn about "New School Forest," the census of 340 trees growing on blocks with New School buildings conducted by photography faculty Matthew Lopez Jensen for an art project for the 2019 centennial. Each of these trees has a card on which someone's drawn a picture, sketched the tree's shape, noted the environs, signs of damage and custodianship, and general observations. The street numbers nearest them are recorded too, but since there's no clear sequence to the archive, we were unable to find most of the trees we'd gone in looking for. (Last class, students were tasked with choosing two trees on our block, sketching them, and noting down the nearest house number.) Even when we did, students registered no epiphanies. "That doesn't look like my tree" was at best a surprise, not a research question.

This was a little disappointing, especially as I was having an epiphany of my own - and also one triggered by not finding what I was looking for. The archivists had brought out most of the tree-related items they'd offered me when I was assembling my "New School Trees" zine last year, including the large plan for a garden behind The New School's main building from September, 1950 (above). The archivist who was our host pointed out that the plan was by one "J. J. Levison M. F." which she presumed meant Master Forester. (It does.) 

I'd wondered last year whether this garden had ever been built; if so it would have been a casualty of the 1956 extension which created the courtyard we now know. This time we had a likely way to find out: a folder of correspondence with J. J. Levison from 1948-1960. Progress on the garden would surely be documented here!

None was, so this was likely a proposal never enacted. (For what it's worth, though, the three "existing trees" marked in the plan were real.) But when the archives close a door they invariably open a window. From the correspondence folder it became clear that Jacob Joshua Levison was not only a Master Forester (trained at Yale) but the instructor of a beloved course which had been running at The New School since 1941.

 

In the Spring 1950 catalog, it was the very last course listed:

There's correspondence about a 1951 iteration - maybe one longer field trip instead of three? - but the course seems not to have run again. The garden sketch was in effect a parting gift after a decade's teaching at The New School. The course was evidently fondly remembered, and in November, 1959, our long-time president Alvin Johnson said a few words when Levison received an award for City College alumni; the next day he penned a letter of thanks and appreciation, apologizing for not having said all he wished to:

You are a tree, Jack Levison. A tree is always beautiful, in its spring leafage and in its full summer foliage, in its autumn color and its bareness after frost, revealing the consummate design of its branching and the noble strength of its trunk.

The tree is the only living thing that keeps its beauty in old age; indeed reaches its highest beauty then. The tree, and some few mortals like Jack Levison.

Perhaps it was too much to expect these students, barely halfway through their second month of college, to delight in the way evidence can disconfirm our expectations and invite us to discover things we hadn't imagined! Into such gaps questions and research can grow!

But perhaps one of the New School Forest cards I lingered over with them - 7 West 11th Street, next to the churchyard of First Presbyterian - may have left a trace, opened a space... 

Amazing example of a L[ondon] P[lane] holding the memory of its dead neighbor, an oak in the churchyard that was cut down; no branches on north side because of the oak which is now a stump.

We'll go check on that tree when I see them next, and on its unforgotten neighbor.