The Hanging Tree of Washington Square Park: History vs. Legend
- Dana at Vibe NYC Tours
- Jul 1
- 4 min read
Updated: Jul 8
At the northwest corner of Washington Square Park stands an English elm tree, gnarled and immense, that has been growing in that same spot for over 300 years. Standing roughly 135 feet tall with a trunk more than five feet in diameter, it's considered Manhattan's oldest living tree — older than the city's street grid, older than the park itself, older than the United States.
Locals call it Hangman's Elm. The Hanging Tree. And for over a century, visitors to Greenwich Village have been told the same chilling story: that traitors and criminals were hanged from its branches, their bodies left swaying over the park below.
It's one of the best ghost stories in New York City.
It's also, almost certainly, not true.
The Legend
According to the legend, the tree acquired its reputation during the American Revolutionary War, when traitors were supposedly hung from its branches. The story grew over the decades that followed — including a particularly vivid claim that the Marquis de Lafayette, visiting from France in 1824, personally witnessed the hanging of twenty highwaymen at the tree. Newgate State Prison stood nearby on Christopher and 10th Streets, and the legend holds that condemned inmates were marched over to the elm to be executed.
It's a vivid, specific, deeply atmospheric story. It's also one that historians have spent years trying — and failing — to verify.
The History
The earliest references to the elm as a "hanging tree" don't appear until the late 19th century — decades after the hangings were supposedly taking place. No serious historian has found evidence that anyone was ever actually hanged from the tree itself. There was even reportedly a plaque at one point making the claim, but it has since disappeared — and the tale itself remains unconfirmed by any public record.
So where did the legend come from? The most likely answer lies in what this land actually was before it became a park: a potter's field, a public burial ground for the city's poor, established in 1797. An estimated 20,000 people were buried there before the burials ceased in 1825. A public gallows did exist on that land — not under the elm itself, which stood on private farmland at the time, but nearby, on what later became part of the park.
Only one execution at that gallows has ever been documented in the historical record.
And her story is the part of this history that actually deserves to be remembered.
🎧 The Village After Dark: A Different Ghost Tour - On our Haunted Greenwich Village Night Tour, every guest is equipped with a premium wireless audio receiver and earpiece. This allows us to deliver an atmospheric soundscape —bringing the dark, documented history of 14 West 10th Street and the Washington Square mass graves to life while you choose your pace. No shouting. No jump scares. Just you, the darkness and the stories the daylight hides.
Space is strictly limited to keep groups small and premium. 👉 Join the 2026 Haunted Waitlist & Secure Your Audio Headset Now
Rose Butler
In 1819, a small, accidental kitchen fire broke out in a home where a young enslaved woman named Rose Butler worked. No one was harmed, and the damage was minor — but arson was a capital crime, and in the tense, unsettled years of New York's gradual emancipation, Rose was made an example of. She was convicted and sentenced to a public hanging in the potter's field.
A gallows was constructed specifically for her execution, and an estimated 10,000 people came to watch her die. She was 19 years old.
Her execution became notorious, and the public outrage that followed — that a teenager had been put to death over a kitchen fire because of who she was — became one of the catalysts that helped push New York toward the abolition of slavery in 1827, just one year after the park's land was repurposed from burial ground to public space.
Rose Butler is the one verified hanging connected to this land. Not twenty highwaymen. Not Revolutionary War traitors. One teenage girl, executed for a fire that hurt no one, in a year when New York was still deciding who counted as a person under the law.
If you want to skip the urban legends and discover the actual locations where the Village hides its real ghosts, check out our verified guide to 9 haunted places in Greenwich Village.
What's Actually Beneath Washington Square Park
The myth of the Hangman's Elm has endured for a reason. Washington Square Park really was a burial ground for thousands of New Yorkers, many of them victims of yellow fever epidemics, many of them buried in unmarked graves because they died poor and alone. During a soil testing project in 2008, archaeologists uncovered four intact skeletons beneath the park — and more have been found since, left respectfully in place.
You don't need an invented hanging tree to find Washington Square Park unsettling. The real history, the one written in burial records and court documents instead of campfire stories, is more than enough.
Why the Legend Persists
Part of what makes the Hangman's Elm so enduring is simple geography — the tree was preserved when the park was formally designed in the 1820s, towering over everything planted around it, a living relic from a time when this corner of the city was farmland bordering a cemetery. People look up at something that old, standing over ground they know holds thousands of the dead, and the story writes itself.
It's a powerful piece of New York City folklore. It's just not the part of this history that actually needs embellishing.
See It For Yourself
The Hangman's Elm still stands at the northwest corner of Washington Square Park today, and it's one of the stops on our Haunted Village walking tour — where we cover the real history of Greenwich Village's darkest stories, separate the documented from the legend, and tell you what's actually true about the ground you're standing on.
Walk the real history with us on the Haunted Village: Greenwich Village Walking Tour → vibenyctours.com
MORE READING
