Remember Mr. T?

Mr. T played the part of B. A. Baracus in the 1980s TV series The A-Team. He was called to mind by a Gossips reader with Chicago roots last Friday, when the side yard at 25 Union Street, owned by T. Eric Galloway, was clear-cut and some of Hudson's most venerable trees were destroyed.  

In 1986, Mr. T bought a turn-of-the-century Tudor estate once owned by meatpacking baron Laurance Armour, in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest. The grounds of the estate had been designed by landscape architect Jen Jensen, who seems to have been the Frederick Law Olmsted of the Midwest. Mr. T wanted to put his personal touch on the property, and toward that end, presumably, he clear-cut the seven-acre estate in 1987, destroying more than a hundred trees. You can read about the Lake Forest Chainsaw Massacre in this recent retrospective and this New York Times article from 1987. 

The next year, prompted, it is believed, by Mr. T's flagrant action, Lake Forest enacted a tree preservation ordinance to prevent developers and homeowners from chopping down trees.