Copper message tubes converge above a circular sorting chamber. Portraits become letters to the city.
New York's pneumatic tube mail service began on October 15, 1897, and on August 1, 1898 the tubes crossed the Brooklyn Bridge to reach the Brooklyn General Post Office. The first carrier sent through the system held a Bible, a flag and a copy of the Constitution. About 55 miles of cast iron tube linked 23 Manhattan post offices, each carrier holding roughly 500 letters and moving at five carriers a minute. In 1953 Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield cancelled the contract and replaced the tubes with trucks.
Source · United States Postal Service, Postal History ↗
Radial sorting bays; overhead bent copper tubes; capsule collars; circular postal rotunda. Original speculative interior. Mood: messages in transit. Everything is procedural geometry with painted surfaces; nothing is a scan or a photograph. The room is an interpretation, and it hangs the New Yorkers the census recorded at this place first.