Climate is an important driver of tree growth in forests of the eastern U.S. Urbanization can augment the growing conditions of trees in ways that could change the sensitivity of radial growth to climate stressors such as excessive heat and water stress. This dataset include tree ring chronologies (1990-2014) in the form of basal area increment for canopy oak and maples trees from paired urban and nearby rural reference forest sites in Baltimore, Maryland, New York City, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts. Also included are metrics of heat stress and water stress from 1990-2014.