Environment: O Christmas Tree

When is a Christmas tree a pollution of the aesthetic atmosphere? When it is made out of light-studded metal "branches" arrayed on seven-story-high flagpoles and surmounted by the four-pointed star that represents the First National City Bank of New York. At least so says one of the bank's huffy critics, Walter F. Hoving, chairman of Tiffany & Co., the Manhattan jewelry emporium. In an open letter to the bank, written in the elegant script of a wedding announcement and placed as an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal, Hoving declared: "We are very sad to see that you are once again...

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