The Letras de Ponce is a famous landmark

Landmark

This is a list of landmarks around the world.Landmarks may be split into two categories - natural phenomena and man-made features, like buildings, bridges, statues, public squares and so forth...

 in Barrio Sabanetas in Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce, Puerto Rico

Ponce is both a city and a municipality in the southern part of Puerto Rico. The city is the seat of the municipal government.The city of Ponce, the fourth most populated in Puerto Rico, and the most populated outside of the San Juan metropolitan area, is named for Juan Ponce de León y Loayza, the...

, located southbound on PR-52 at the intersection with PR-10. The iconic monument consists of five letters that spell the name of the city P-O-N-C-E in 20 feet (6.1 m) by 18 feet (5.5 m) by 12 feet (3.7 m) red and black letters. The letters, and its resulting sign, were designed by Carlos Rivera Villafañe, a sculptor from Ponce.

History

In 2002 the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation

Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works

The Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works is a government agency of Puerto Rico regulating transportation and public works. The agency's headquarters are located in San Juan.-External links:*...

 presented a contest for the design of a monument to be placed on State Route 52 (PR-52), at the entrance of the city of Ponce. The contest was part of what would become 97 projects of public art

Public art

The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...

 spread throughout Puerto Rico.

In selecting the work of art, the Government of Puerto Rico considered 318 submissions from hundreds of artists around the world, including Ada Bobonis, Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton

Ann Hamilton is a contemporary American artist best known for her installations, textile art, and sculptures, but is also active in the fields of photography, printmaking, video, and video installation....

, Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas

Antoni Muntadas is a multidisciplinary, media artist, sometimes also referred to as Antonio Muntadas or, simply, Muntadas. Since 1971, he lives and works in New York. Muntadas was a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT,1977–1984, and is currently Visiting Professor with...

, Liliana Porter

Liliana Porter

Liliana Porter is a contemporary artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Porter attended the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes in Buenos Aires, Argentina and the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City, Mexico. She has exhibited internationally and currently lives and works out of New York. Porter...

, and Devorah Sperber

Devorah Sperber

Devorah Sperber is an American installation artist known for creating works out of spools of thread, chenille pipe cleaners and map tacks that act as optical illusions.Some of her work has involved using thousands of spools of thread to create pixilated versions of iconic works of art by famous...

. Rivera Villafañe's proposal was one of the winners, and the winner for the Ponce entrance monument.

Construction and design

The letters are built of "marine steel", also known as corteen, the same material used in the construction of ships. Each letter measures 20 feet high by 18 feet wide by 12 feet deep. Together they span an area of half a kilometer. The breadth of the letters is intended to symbolize the extension of the city of Ponce, "heightening Ponce's urban identity and raising it to its territorial extension." The letters cost $430,000 USD. Its design, manufacture and suiting all were done in Puerto Rico.

Carlos Rivera Villafañe

Carlos Rivera Villafañe was born in Ponce in 1966. He graduated from the Escuela de Artes Graficas de Puerto Rico in San Juan, Puerto Rico with a bachelor's degree in 1989. In addition to the Letras de Ponce, Rivera Villafañe has works in San Juan

San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...

, Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, Lima

Lima

Lima is the capital and the largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón, Rímac and Lurín rivers, in the central part of the country, on a desert coast overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Together with the seaport of Callao, it forms a contiguous urban area known as the Lima...

, Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Cuenca

Cuenca

Cuenca may refer to:In Ecuador:* Cuenca, Ecuador, capital of the Azuay Province and named in honor to the spanish city.** Cuenca basin , the drainage basin** Cuenca basin , a geologic structural basinIn the Philippines:...

, Eslovenia, Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, and Miami.

Maintenance

The monument is regularly maintained with fresh paint as recommended by its designer. They require special care as well as a special paint. They are painted in black and red, the traditional colors of the city of Ponce. The monument is also painted after acts of vandalism, including grafitti.

Location

The monument is located on smooth, flat terrain, and each letter is surrounded by flowers. Its site is just outside the northeastern edge of the urban area of Ponce, on PR-52, the main road into Ponce from San Juan. While the monument is visible as motorists approach the city on the highway, it has been noted that motorists are not able to stop to admire it, as they risk being fined.

The monument's unique location made it an ideal site to hold a protest. In October 2009, a group of some 20 Government of Puerto Rico public employees used the site to launch a protest against their recent layoff.

Alterations and vandalism

It is illegal to make unauthorized physical alterations to the sign. The letters have been vandalised a few times. In November 2011, the letter "O" was vandalised with grafitti.

Controversy

Due to its location at the center and both sides of a major expressway, it is one of Puerto Rico's most controversial public art works. In April 2009, the Puerto Rico Department of Transportation and Public Works (DTOP) was fined almost $80 million USD for placing the letters there. Subsequently a bill was introduced into the Legislature of Puerto Rico to eliminate public art from Puerto Rico roads. The basis was that, allegedly, they were in violation of the Federal Highway Administration

Federal Highway Administration

The Federal Highway Administration is a division of the United States Department of Transportation that specializes in highway transportation. The agency's major activities are grouped into two "programs," the Federal-aid Highway Program and the Federal Lands Highway Program...

regulations. In February 2010, it was agreed that the letters would stay where they were.

External links

• Photos of the Ponce letters:
  • Photos of Ponce letters at Panoramio
  • Photos of Ponce letters at Flick