I’m reading an interesting book on trees (I should probably stop right there but I won’t) and came upon this gem:

In the original forests of America, the tuliptree was second in girth only to the sycamore. From the southern colonies in 1709 came the report of John Lawson, surveyor general, of a hollow tuliptree “wherein a lusty Man had his Bed and Household Furniture, and liv’d in it, till his Labour got him a more fashionable Mansion.”

From Trees of New England A Natural History by Charles Fergus.