A brick sorting rotunda under a copper dome and a skylight, the cast iron tubes converging overhead with brass collars, capsules sliding through, sorting desks and mail sacks below. 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 ↗
The circular brick rotunda and copper dome with an oculus, ten glass and iron tubes converging on a brass hub, brass capsule collars, radial oak sorting desks with canvas sacks, the departures board, the four faced station clock, a porch on the avenue. Mood: every letter in the city at thirty miles an hour. 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.