Wall with Tree

I spotted this wall in a nice, wooded neighborhood in the mid-cities. The house sits on a huge corner lot and has a winding driveway that connects to the houses on each side of it (you can see one of those houses in the picture).

The wall doesn't extend to a gate or anything, its just about 30 feet long and sits on the corner. I guess its only purpose was beautification of the lot. I didn't get a chance to look very closely (I was stopped in traffic, haha!), but I wonder if at one point or another there was a light on each of the pillars.

The thing that interested me most about this wall, though, was the tree that is nearly growing into the back side of it. Surely no one would build a wall this close to a tree, or plant a tree that would grow that large next to the wall. So I can only assume that the wall was there before the tree and the tree wasn't planted but grew there naturally. And the tree, with its HUGE size and height, looks like it has been there for years and years. So I wonder, how old is the house? How old is this wall?