Dream in the Shade of the Black Sugar Maple

Essay by Ron Henderson in Michelangelo Sabatino (editor), The Edith Farnsworth House. Monacelli Press, 2024

Essay excerpt

A broadly spreading black sugar maple gathered the Edith Farnsworth House around it. The deep shade cast by the dense canopy of the tree obstructed the southerly summer sun and the vibrant yellow-orange fall foliage reverberated in reflections on the windows, plaster ceiling, and white steel columns of the house. Its stout black trunk, heavy branches, and thick stems cast skeletal shadows on the snowy winter ground.

In Edith’s memoirs, she recounted an early visit to the site, in 1944, with her friend, Sue. Dr. Farnsworth wrote, “We walked down to the riverbank where we found the most inviting easy chairs between the swelling roots of two immense black sugar maples whose shade was repeated and extended by the hackberries, the lindens, and the walnut trees grouped about us. In the water, close to the shore, a milk white heron stood, motionless at the foot of his rippling image …” Based on an obvious knowledge of tree taxonomy, Edith was enthralled by these trees and, as the commissioning client, one could assume that she directed the attention of her architect to the black maples. In a subsequent paragraph, she writes of the impact these trees had on she and Sue, “I imagine that we both dreamed in the shade of the black sugar maple that night.”