Robert Moses and Isamu Noguchi Battled for Decades—About Playgrounds

In 1980, an Isamu Noguchi sculpture was abruptly removed from the lobby of the Bank of Tokyo in New York. Some customers had found the looming presence of the suspended 17-foot cube unsettling, and the bank’s leadership shared their unease; one report likened the folded aluminum structure to a guillotine. Once it was removed, Noguchi quipped to a friend, “We are out in the street where we belong.” His tongue-in-cheek remark reflected his conviction: that sculpture belonged not