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(Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, A Division of the Department of Arkansas Heritage, Mason Toms, photographer)
The plain severity of this small one-story buff brick, flat-roofed building is a familiar design for post offices in small towns in the state that were funded by the WPA. Here the central entrance has a cast-concrete surround with a deeply recessed entrance and tall flanking windows. On display in the lobby is a wall-mounted three-piece terra-cotta relief sculpture, Tomato Culture, by New York sculptor Berta Margoulies, a Polish American who studied art in Paris and at the Art Students’ League in New York. The central, largest piece (51 × 28 inches in height) depicts a farm worker with mules preparing to plow; the two smaller flanking pieces portray a man and a woman harvesting tomatoes. The figures are bold, simplified and stylized. At the time the subject matter was chosen, Monticello advertised itself as the “Tomato Capital of Arkansas.”