Brooklyn’s ‘Last Living Landmark,’ the race to save the Magnolia Tree Earth Center

By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff, Report for America Corps Member

In the heart of Bedstuy, Brooklyn, grows a southern magnolia tree that is over 40feet tall and protected by three historical brownstone buildings. The landmarked tree has survived there for the last 140 years, inspiring and serving the community that sprung up around it. Sadly, the Magnolia Tree Earth Center is in danger of losing the site if they don’t raise enough money for much-needed repairs.

“Magnolia Tree Earth Center has been serving the community for 50 years, providing exceptional environmental and workforce development programming,” said chairman of the Magnolia Tree Earth Center Wayne Devonish. “Now we need the community to support us.”

The Center has owned all three buildings for the past 50 years and urgently needs to raise at least $350,000 to pay for required repairs to the front facade of the brownstones and to take down the scaffolding, said Devonish.

“In Bedstuy, at this point in time, the Black history is being eroded daily. Institution after institution is falling. Another few years, you’re not going to know there was a Black community here,” he said. “We are going to work extremely hard to make sure this institution not only survives another hundred years but thrives.”

The Center was founded by the late Hattie

‘The Tree Lady’ Carthan to preserve the magnolia tree and its brownstones. She was the driving force behind getting the site’s landmark designation in 1970.

“She was from the South, and she saw that a tree was about to get knocked down, the Magnolia grandiflora, and the buildings,” said Devonish. “She remembered those trees from her childhood in the South. And she said, ‘There’s no way you’re going to knock that down’.”

The tree itself is not normally found this far north of Philadelphia because the con ditions are not ideal. Carthan learned that the brownstones kept the tree warm and out of harsh and cold winds. Devonish said the buildings were abandoned and in dis repair then, so they were originally slated to be destroyed to make room for a parking lot and new apartments.

Carthan rallied to raise what money she could to protect the tree from the city. She aimed to build a wall around it for $20,000. Factoring in inflation costs, that would be about $157,270 today. It was an ambitious undertaking, to say the least, for the struggling community of Bedstuy residents, but they persevered in raising about $7,000 ($55,000), which the Horticultural Society in New York matched to the dollar, said the city.

By 1976, the plans to develop the block changed, and Carthan was able to buy the brownstones altogether and renovate them.

Devonish said she dedicated her senior