"The Letter"

"The Letter". . , The Haddon Heights Post Office was constructed in 1937-38, funded by the Works Project Administration (WPA) during the Great Depression to provide jobs for everyone from the woman architect, the construction workers, the material manufacturers, the Postal Service employees, and an award-winning artist whose bas-relief sculpture graces an interior wall. The artist, Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), was selected on the strength of his sculptural work for the Federal Trade Commission in New York. In Haddon Heights, the artist was inspired by the buildings use to create the image of someone writing a letter. He was paid $700 for his work, which was executed in artificial stone called Tymstone., Noguchi was among America's most innovative sculptors of the 20th century. He believed that sculpture gave shape, meaning, and order to space. Noguchi strove for timeliness through abstraction of things, places and ideas. Inside the Post Office, he created the abstraction of a woman, executed in the artistic style known as "Depression Modern" or "Art Moderne." Yet the sensuality of Noguchi's rounded, curvaceous forms in his sculpture led the postmaster to complain that the figure was "objectionable" and "an eyesore." , Insleee Hopper of the Federal Treasury Relief Project, responded in a letter to the Haddon Heights Postmaster, stating in part, "The sculpture for the Haddon Heights Post Office is an outstanding example of Mr. Noguchi's work.... We believe that in time the patrons of the Post Office will grow to appreciate it. The sculpture is executed in a style which is possibly unfamiliar to many of the people who see it but we have found that frequently those who are slow to accept [a] work of art at first eventually become its staunchest supporters." Today, Isamu Noguchi is considered one of the twentieth century's most important and and critically acclaimed sculptors.