On December 21, 1912, a 60-foot-tall tree arrived by horse-drawn truck from the Adirondacks to provide Manhattan’s Madison Square Park with the glow of 2,300 colored electric bulbs. The twinklers were donated by the Edison Company, and the tree was the first of its kind: Having a Christmas tree in one’s living room was a familiar custom, but a tree outside in a public park was something new. The idea came for the tree came from Emilie D. Lee Herreshoff, the 49-year-old wife of a prominent chemical scientist. After witnessing a rise in social causes related to the city’s poor, […]
104 years ago, the nation’s first public Christmas tree went up in Madison Square Park : 6sqft
