E.B. White’s willow tree

[Illustration by Edward C. Caswell.]

Here is the illustration that furnished what E.B. White called “the tailpiece” for his book Here Is New York (1949). This tailpiece is missing from the 1999 edition (titled Here is New York).

Illustrator Edward C. Caswell (1879–1963) did many New York scenes for the weekly New York newspaper The Villager. Three of those works are for sale at the Deep Archives.

Thanks to Benjo, who found a 2002 New York Times article about the willow tree in this illustration. The tree was still standing in 2002, in the (private) Turtle Bay Gardens, between East 48th and 49th Streets.

[“[T]he tailpiece”: from a July 3, 1949 letter to Cass Canfield of Harper & Row, in Letters of E.B. White, ed. Dorothy Lobrano Guth (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), 308.]

Related reading
Here is New York (1999 edition)
E.B. White on New York City (An excerpt)
Mr. White’s neighborhoods (An excerpt)
Turtle Bay Historic District (PDF download, 102K, nyc.gov)