After the lights dim, Rockefeller Christmas trees still give
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NEWBURGH, N.Y. — Old Rockefeller Center Christmas trees never really die, they just get built into the wall frames and floor supports of affordable homes.
For the past decade, the ornament-laden trees that have been lit up with glitz, songs and dancing Rockettes have gone on to be milled into lumber used in dozens of Habitat for Humanity homes from Philadelphia to Pascagoula, Mississippi. Each tree yields a truckload of 100 or more boards, all stamped with an image of the tree and the year it was on display.
Wood from three of the Rockefeller trees has gone 50 miles (80 kilometres) up the Hudson River to the hardscrabble city of Newburgh, New York, which has helped create an unlikely Rockefeller Row of four homes on the same block.
“They didn’t just cut it and throw it away. They used it in something good. And what better than my home?” says Viridiana Perez, who was visiting her family’s soon-to-be home being built with wood from last year’s 94-foot (28-meter) Norway spruce.
