It took about a decade from the time that the church was completed for the congregation to secure the funds. &nbsp;Meiere was asked to create a primitive Byzantine style glass mosaic depicting the Transfiguration scene with Moses and Elijah on either side of Jesus Christ for the apse. &nbsp;The next problem was to fabricate it and they settled on a German firm, Puhl and Wagner. &nbsp;Samples were produced. &nbsp;They were hired. &nbsp;A year later the installation was complete. &nbsp; &nbsp;Beneath the Apse is the stringcourse of eight panels illustrating Christian virtues and the characteristics of Christian behavior. &nbsp;

St Barts

Transfiguration and Stringcourses

Nearly two decades later Meiere was commissioned to design six clerestory windows. &nbsp;Four were actually installed that were intended to show 20th Century Byzantine style art in America: Magnificat, 1948; Gloria in Excelsis Deo, 1949; Nunc Dimittis, 1955; Benedicite, 1956.&nbsp;

St Barts Church

Clerestory Windows

The capitol was built and decorated in four stages around an earlier capitol building between 1922 and 1932 to save the cost of relocating workers to temporary offices during construction. The vestibule inside the north entrance of the cruciform building was built during the first phase of construction (1922-24). The foyer, rotunda and dome, and Senate Chamber were built during the second phase (1925-28). The tower was added to the rotunda during the third phase (1928-30). The west-center section of the capitol, including the House of Representatives, was completed during the fourth phase (1930-32).

Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue commissioned the young Hildreth Meière to decorate his yet unfinished Nebraska State Capitol and had approved her preliminary designs for the vestibule dome at the north entrance before his death in 1924.1&nbsp;By the time the capitol was complete, Meière had decorated the domes of the vestibule, foyer, and rotunda, and the ceiling of Senate Chamber in glazed ceramic tile; the floors of the vestibule, foyer, and rotunda in marble mosaic and inlaid marble; the walnut beams below the ceiling of the House of Representatives in a gold-leaf frieze; and the beams of the House Lounge in oil-based paint. She also designed tapestries in wool for the Senate Chamber and entrance doors to the House of Representatives in painted and gilded leather. When Nebraska became unicameral in 1937, the Senate Chamber became a conference room known today as the Warner Chamber. The larger House of Representatives, or West Legislative Chamber, became the main legislative chamber.Meière’s designs at the capitol depict an iconographic program developed by the philosopher and anthropologist Hartley Burr Alexander. Alexander’s symbolism relates the History of Nebraska to the Ideals of Western Civilization. Following Goodhue’s death, Alexander became Meière’s mentor. He not only provided her with iconography but also guided Meière in the creation of her designs.

Nebraska State Capitol Lincoln, NE

History of Nebraska and the Ideals of Western Civilization

Robert J. Reiley commissioned Hildreth Meière to design an altar frontal for the Lady Chapel during a renovation of the Cathedral in 1941. Her Annunciation in inlaid marble, executed by Alexander Pelli and Company, relates to the Gothic architecture of the Lady Chapel.Echoing the trefoil-shaped stone lancets of the surrounding walls, Meière set her scene against a trefoil-shaped marble medallion. She dramatized the Annunciation by extending the angel’s wings beyond the edge of the trefoil ground to suggest that he has just alighted with important news. Surrounding the Annunciation is a conventional rose vine pattern, also in inlaid marble.

St. Patrick's Cathedral

Annunciation

Unfortunately both murals were lost during a renovation of the lobby prior to 1993. Meière’s painted murals have been replaced with lunette-shaped windows.

Hildreth Meière decorated the lunette-shaped wall over lobby entrances at 25 West 43rd St. and 28 West 44th St, with painted murals. Over the 43rd Street entrance, she depicted an Architect and Developer in business suits. They are seated at a desk discussing an architectural plan. A skyscraper under construction is visible through the window behind them. In the lunette-shaped mural above the 44th Street entrance, The Builders, Meière depicted construction workers on the job.&nbsp;

25 West 43rd Street

28 West 44th Street

Architect and Developer + The Builders

For the entrance to the Science and Education Building, Meière designed a metal-relief sculpture, "Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, and the Dragon of Ignorance," showing Hippocrates banishing superstition and introducing the scientific method. The aluminum and brass sculpture measured fourteen by twenty-one feet. Meière created several maquettes for the piece in her Art Deco style. A scale model of the Dragon’s head is part of the Rambusch Company Collection. Meière believed that “good exterior decorations are uncomplicated and easy to read, and that the heavy, the involved, and the gloomy have no place on the outside of a World’s Fair Building.”Above the entrance facing the Avenue of Patriots, Meière depicted "Primitive Man and Civilized Man" above an inscription from Sophocles, “Many wonders there are but naught so wondrous as man.” Rambusch executed the figures in terra cotta relief. Meière appreciated the fair giving mural painters “a great creative experience.”For the facade facing Washington Square, Meière designed portraits of Tadeusz Kosciuszko (left) and Comte de Rochambeau (right). She said: “My ‘Kosciuszko’ at the Fair almost did itself, and is essentially as it was from the first sketch, whereas its companion ‘Rochambeau’ had to be designed over and over again before it looked right.”<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a> Unable to paint her murals due to union rules, she relied on Rambusch and artist H. Morton and was pleased with the result.Meière’s most colorful mural, "Man between the Past and the Future," appeared on the curved facade facing the courtyard. The Art Deco-style mural depicted a female figure reaching for the “ever advancing lamp of knowledge.” Man stands between a sphinx symbolizing the past and waves representing the future. Meière explained, “I drew a head ten feet high, I drew a doctor thirty feet tall... After the small sketches are approved... they are developed up through other scales... until the full-size cartoon is drawn. Then the artist is ready to go up on the wall... In my case, all my work from this stage on was executed for me by others... My designs for metal, mosaic, and terracotta also passed through the hands of good craftsmen, and came out, as usual, looking better than the cartoons.”<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[2]</a>On the long facade facing the garden court, Meière designed a mural of "The Picnic," with figures painted by Rambusch. The mural measured fourteen feet high by one hundred ten feet long and depicted people engaged in various leisure activities.Meière decorated two facades at the south end of the building with related murals: "The Family" and "The School," featuring oversized figures of a family and a teacher with pupils in a traditional style. Ravenna Mosaics executed the murals in silhouette mosaic, with only ten percent in mosaic tiles set into colored cement. The New York Times described "The School" as “utilizing a mosaic technique, with small gilded tiles comprising the figures of a teacher and her children, against a background of smooth plaster in a soft, dull shade of green.” In January 1939, department store windows in New York displayed sketches by “living artists” of murals designed for the World’s Fair. Meière’s color was the green of "The Family" and "The School," presented at Bonwit Teller with cork floors “in simulation of the texture of the walls on which the artist has fashioned her mosaic murals on the Medicine and Public Health Building.”<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/new-york-times?name=New_York_Times">[3]</a>

World's Fair: Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex

1939 World's Fair Murals

In 1991, The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the lobby a city landmark. The lobby was subsequently restored by Rudin Management.

Hildreth Meière was asked to design decoration for the lobby ceiling that would symbolize the purpose of the building as a vital center of international communication. To represent Continents Linked by the Telephone and Wireless, Meière designed four neo-classically influenced, individual Art Deco figures personifying Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia around the rim of the ceiling. These continents are linked to two female messengers, an eagle and a condor, in the center through gold lines representing the Telephone and Wireless. A rich border reminiscent of Native American quillwork completes the composition. Meière’s allegorical female messengers with a condor and eagle in the center of the ceiling face different directions so that the ceiling reads well from various angles. The messengers grasp diagonal gold lines representing telephone and telegraph wires leading to four Continents personified on the ceiling’s periphery.Australia is shown with a sheaf of wheat, a sheep, and a kangaroo; Africa, with a pair of lions and the pyramids in the background; Asia, with a tiger, elephant, and pagoda; and Europe, with a sceptre and orb set against St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and Notre Dame in Paris. Meière also employed silhouette mosaic to create a design along the border of the ceiling in a pattern reminiscent of Native American quillwork. Inside the main entrance where the Telephone Wires and Radio Unite to Make Neighbors of Nations is located, Meière depicted a map of the world. She used brown building tile for her design, the same material used to construct the lobby walls. The map was executed by Continental Clay Products.

AT&T Long Distance Building

Mosaics representing Telephone Connection

In 1934, Charles Maginnis commissioned Hildreth Meière to design a dome for the Chapel of the Passion, recently built to accommodate the overflow crowds at St. Michael’s Monastery Church dating to the mid-nineteenth century. He asked Meière to design the chapel dome in the style of Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo in keeping with the style of the dome in the main sanctuary.1 The subject matter for the chapel dome was to be St. Paul of the Cross and others who had introduced the Passionists to the English-speaking world.When Meière decorated a dome, she typically created to-scale studies, full-scale cartoons, and several to-scale models painted with her design. A scale model in painted plaster allowed Meière to check the perspective. It also showed her how her design would look when interrupted by windows or light fixtures already in place.Meière superimposed grid lines on both a painted model and on her study in gouache for the Rambusch craftsmen to use when they enlarged and transferred her design to the dome of the Chapel of the Passion.In addition to decorating the dome of the chapel, Meière designed an altarpiece to hang above a marble altar in each of three large niches beneath the dome. The scenes Meière depicted included Blessed Gemma in a Domestic Scene, St. Paul of the Cross Preaching, and the Death of St. Gabriel.Meière’s to-scale studies for the three altarpieces in gouache on paper convey their once lively colors and suggest the richness of the original chapel decoration.A few weeks after Rambusch craftsmen had installed Meière’s designs in the Chapel of the Passion, a fire broke out in the main sanctuary of St. Michael’s Monastery Church. A workman is thought to have left a blowtorch on in the main dome when he went to lunch. The resulting fire, so large that it could be seen from Manhattan, destroyed the interior of the main sanctuary.Meière did not know for a day whether her work in the Chapel of the Passion had been also been destroyed. Incredibly, it survived the fire intact, only to succumb to neglect by 1970.2 The dome has since been painted over; the two side niches where Meière’s altarpieces once hung now contain windows; and the center niche has been covered with fabric.Relocated to (in part) three altarpieces to St. Paul of the Cross Monastery Pittsburgh, PA.

In 1936, two years after the fire that destroyed the main sanctuary of St. Michael’s Monastery Church, Hildreth Meière entered a competition to decorate the rebuilt interior. It did not matter that Meière had successfully completed an earlier commission to decorate St. Michael’s Chapel of the Passion—she was still required to win a competition to be awarded the commission to decorate the rebuilt main sanctuary. As she explained to her old mentor Hartley Burr Alexander:I was invited into a small competition for a big church job—about 1400 square feet of Renaissance character painting. It would pay me $10,000, of which I would get about half, so of course I am desperately anxious to get it. I think my sketches, which go in on Saturday, are what is needed, but there are more elements besides the merits of the designs which will govern the award, I am afraid, and I am not over-confident.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>Having won the competition, Meière went to England to design murals for the chancel walls. She was accompanied by her assistant Dean Fausett. As Meière’s daughter recalled:In 1935 we went to Epsom, England, taking with us the late Dean Fausett, then a young assistant who helped [my mother] execute studies for St. Michael’s Passionist Monastery in Union City, New Jersey. She had a studio in the attic in the home of Mabel Batley, who was an aunt of actor John Gielgud. Recently Dean told me that Gielgud and the actor Maurice Evans used to come up to see how the work was going.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[2]</a>Meière’s murals for the main sanctuary included seventy over-life-size figures. All were completed in time for the rededication of St. Michael’s in 1936. For the tympanum above the west wall of the chancel, Meière depicted Christ in Glory Surrounded by Angels and Saints. Architect Charles Maginnis described Meière’s design as the “striking climax of the decoration.” Directly below the tympanum in the center of the west wall, Meière painted the Last Supper. In a scene to the left, she depicted St. Michael Banishing the Fallen Angels from Heaven; in a scene to the right, St. Michael Weighing the Souls of the Just and Unjust.All of Meière’s figures were executed in a Venetian Renaissance style in keeping with the original style of the decoration of the nineteenth-century main dome that the fire had destroyed. The canvases are in place today, although they are hidden from view by a curtained wall.

Among Hildreth Meière’s designs for the rebuilt St. Michael’s Monastery Church after the 1934 fire were four enormous roundels on the pendentives of the new central dome, each depicting one of the Four Evangelists in oil on canvas. Meière described the roundels as “paintings of the four Evangelists at impressive scale.” Meière’s murals for the chancel were installed and her roundels were affixed to the pendentives before the baldacchino, or canopy over the altar, was constructed.As of 2014, only two of the four roundels remained in place. Luke and John had detached from the plaster and been lost. Matthew and Mark, both in desperate need of restoration, had peeled away from the plaster and were hanging precariously:

Following the fire in 1934, Hildreth Meière won a competition to decorate the interior of the main sanctuary. Her commission included the tympana above the two side chapels on either side of the chancel. On the tympanum above the left side chapel, Meière depicted the Annunciation; above the right side chapel, Christ at Work with St. Joseph. The style of both murals in oil on canvas is consistent with Meière’s Venetian Renaissance style throughout.Today the Annunciation is in fair condition, with slight damage to the image of the well behind Mary. There is also extensive damage to the plaster surrounding the tympanum. Although the Annunciation remains in place, it is hidden behind a recently constructed wall and is not visible to the public.&nbsp;

Due to its architectural importance and its having served the community for over 100 years, in 2014, St. Michael’s (Hudson Korean Presbyterian) Church was added to the list of Preservation New Jersey’s “10 Most Endangered Historic Places in New Jersey.”

St. Michael's Monastery Church (Hudson Korean Presbyterian Church)

St. Michael's Monastery Church Murals

Health and Welfare, Hildreth Meière’s eighty-one-foot Art Deco frieze in glazed terra cotta, decorates the back wall of the east interior open-air courtyard at the Municipal Center in Washington, DC. Meière was awarded the project through a competition sponsored by the Public Works Administration (PWA). A frieze on the wall of the west interior open-air courtyard was designed by Waylande Gregory.In a series of ten narrative vignettes, the frieze depicts the health benefits and social services available to Washington residents in 1941.&nbsp;Klimo, a sculptor at the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, executed the figures in contrasting blocks of color in high and sunken relief. As with every medium for which Meière designed, she relied upon trained craftsmen to execute her cartoons. Collaboration was key to a work’s success. Meière was lavish in her praise of sculptor Klimo at the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company. As she explained during an interview in 1941:The designer appreciates the contribution the good craftsman makes; he is not jealous of it but prays for the greater glory that creative craftsmanship can bring to the work.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>

Municipal Center Washington, DC

Health and Welfare

Upon becoming an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1942, Hildreth Meière was asked to provide a self-portrait. In a biographical sketch that she later wrote, Meière explained:<blockquote>I am an associate of the National Academy and never expect to be anything else, as I never exhibit paintings. All I have to show are sketches for murals, battered cartoons and photographs of finished commissions.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a></blockquote>Meière depicted herself as a muralist by placing herself in front of a ladder and a mural that showed the enormous scale of her work. The hands of the painted figures behind her are larger than Meière’s own head in the self-portrait.

National Academy Museum

Self-portrait

Hildreth Meière’s roundels of Dance, Drama, and Song on the 50th Street facade of Radio City Music Hall are her most visible work. Often cited as iconic examples of Art Deco design, the roundels were fabricated in mixed metal and enamel. A recently developed process that kept dissimilar metals from affecting each other when used together out of doors made it possible for Meière to select metals for their color potential and combine them on a scale never before attempted. Each roundel is eighteen feet in diameter.&nbsp;Too big to be cast, the sculptures were fabricated by the master metalsmith Oscar B. Bach, who “beat them into shape in the manner of a silversmith.” He then added vitreous enamel colors to the figures by grinding fragments of colored glass into powder, mixing the powder with water, and applying the mixture evenly to the metal surface. During the firing that followed, the particles of glass powder fused to form a thin, colored glaze of glass enamel that adhered to the metal surface.While Meière was working on her design for Dance, a reporter visited her in her studio and described what she saw:Over at the easel Mr. Lynn Fausett, Miss Meière’s assistant, was painting in detail in silvery tones the medallions with a figure representing the dance. Even that small section of the design, hardly more than four or five feet square, gave an impressive idea of the brilliantly decorative qualities that will distinguish the completed work. Strewn around on a table were numerous small pencil sketches of the designs on transparent paper. Each sketch must be drawn many times before it is ready to be enlarged, Miss Meière said. Each of these sketches must be a piece of creative work, never mind how many times the artist has drawn and redrawn it. If two or three sketches were merely tracings of the first, the quality of the final design would be less vital.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>Meière’s designs for Dance, Drama and Song evolved gradually, as evidenced by her numerous sketches and studies. She sent sketches to her mentor from Nebraska, Hartley Burr Alexander, who had been hired to provide a unified iconography for Rockefeller Center, but had been dismissed from the project:I know you felt they ought to be very modern, and I could have wept that you weren’t here to tell me what you meant and help me do it. The more I studied the material with Oscar Bach the more simple and classical I became, and I am afraid you will think that they are too derivative from the Greek vase sort of thing. I will have my sketches photostatted and send them out for you to see. I’m afraid it is rather too late to do more than regret their mistakes, as the designs have now been officially approved. However, I have to put some clothes on my nude figure of Song! I believe that was a Rockefeller touch.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[2]</a>

50th street facade of Radio City Music Hall

Radio City Music Hall

Dance, Drama, Song

Map depicting The Journeys of St. Isaac Jogues in the New World above the entrance to Duane Library, currently the Office for Undergraduate Admissions. Hildreth Meière designed a large map depicting&nbsp;The Journeys of St. Isaac Jogues in the New World for the wall above the main entrance to Duane Library. He was the first Catholic Priest in New York City. The map was executed in casein and gesso relief by Louis Ross, whose name appears together with Meière’s on the bottom left. Meière and Ross collaborated on all three of her commissions at Fordham University. In addition to painting the map, Ross gilded Meière’s three painted altarpieces for the main and side altars of the University Church.

Fordham University Duane Library Bronx

The Journeys of St. Isaac Jogues in the New World

Hildreth Meière’s Art Deco style enlivens her wall relief sculpture in bronze silhouette that decorates the lobby of the Logan Square Post Office in Chicago, Illinois. It was the first time that Meière had worked in this medium. The commission came as a result of her having submitted an “outstanding design” as her entry in a competition for a panel to decorate the Justice Department Building. Although the panel was never executed, artists who presented “outstanding designs” were given the opportunity to decorate post offices.1When she received the commission to decorate the wall of the Logan Square Post Office, Meière worried about creating a hackneyed image. She sent a sketch of Mercury to Inslee A. Hopper, Assistant Superintendent, Section of Painting and Sculpture, with the following explanation:<blockquote>As to subject matter, I assumed from the blueprints that a figure subject was desired. I realize quite well how hackneyed the Mercury symbol is, but until something else as recognizable comes along, it still seems a good bet. Wheels, wings, trains, aeroplanes, etc., etc., suggest transportation rather than the mail, and whereas running animals can give a fine design suggesting speed, they too have nothing to do with mail. An interesting design might be evolved from a stamping machine, but would it be recognized? If you do anything with a postman, it is apt to get funny, specially if it is at all stylized. Remains the eagle, either in flight, or very much formalized, as a central spot, which I gather is not desired.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a></blockquote>Meière’s linear composition with Mercury is both dynamic and original.&nbsp;

Logan Square Post Office Chicago, IL

The Post

In 1965, The Pursuit of Wealth was irreparably damaged and covered over when air conditioning ducts were put into the lobby ceiling during a renovation of the building. It is no longer extant.

The one exception to Hildreth Meière’s characteristic figurative designs can be seen in the abstract, Art Deco-style Banking Room at One Wall Street, where the Irving Trust Company asked Voorhees, Gmelin &amp; Walker to provide “an inviting and friendly” reception area for their clients. Perry Coke Smith, a design assistant at the firm, created an abstract pattern for the walls and ceiling to be executed in glass mosaic. Meière was hired to provide scale and gradations of color for the faceted design. She and her assistant, Lynn Fausett, painted a range of colors first onto three-inch scale and later onto full-scale photostats of the angular design. Her warm colors shift from a deep oxblood at the floor to orange with gold higher on the walls, to gold with orange on the ceiling. The gold-leafed tesserae forming the jagged lines of the abstract pattern get closer as they rise. Meière’s gradations are so subtle that it appears as if the torcheres in the room were responsible for the gradually changing hues from dark to light. Meière’s colorful design was fabricated in large tesserae, or pieces of glass mosaic, by Pühl &amp; Wagner in Berlin and shipped to New York to be installed by their American affiliate, Ravenna Mosaics. The same firm had recently installed Meière’s designs at St. Bartholomew’s Church and Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan. The irregular shape of the room makes it difficult to see a repeat in the abstract design, but the patterns are actually repeated on opposite walls. Equally difficult to find are the letters and numbers A1 to H3, with which segments of the design are coded to correspond with the cartoons for each wall section. The striking Banking Room demonstrates how even without allegorical or religious imagery, Meière was able to combine color and scale imaginatively to create an extraordinary Art Deco space.In addition to providing color and scale for the Banking Room at One Wall Street, Meière was asked to design a ceiling for the lobby. Meière herself developed the iconography. The theme that she chose was The Pursuit of Wealth. Meière explained the appropriateness of her subject:Standing as this building does in the heart of the “Financial District,” and at the head of the street whose name throughout the world is the symbol of money-power, it seemed appropriate to express in the ceiling of its main entrance some allegory of the pursuit of wealth.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>Her iconography started at the Broadway entrance to the building:...the Pursuit of Money symbolizes that evolution into Beauty which money can have. In the extreme south east corner of the ceiling is a human figure, which typifies the soul of Man, reaching up from the Materiality of Worldly Possessions to the beauty that money can purchase, reaching up to the three winged figures which represent the Need of Beauty which is in all men, who in turn, with upraised faces and features all can understand, sweep on to Beauty itself, symbolized by the flower forms in the northwest corner.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[2]</a>Meière found the space itself a challenge:The walls were of black marble and the ceiling was the reflecting surface for the light. The design, therefore, could not be heavy either in mass or in color, or the effect would be too dark. Many experiments with silver leaf were made, and the incidental veils of color were blown on with an air brush.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[3]</a>As she had for her designs at the Nebraska State Capitol and Radio City Music Hall, Meière sent her studies for the lobby ceiling to her old mentor Hartley Burr Alexander for his comments. Meière explained to Alexander that the architect had insisted upon movement in the design. Her challenge was to create a figurative design that would read well from different directions. She further explained to Alexander the problem of combining abstraction with figures and how she solved it by turning to artist Kimon Nicolaides.

One Wall Street, Irving Trust Company

Abstract Design + The Pursuit of Wealth

In 1935 Meière painted a remembrance shrine for Saint Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York. The shrine was designed to house the Book of Remembrance containing the names of people and events associated with the development of the parish. Even though she was decorating a free-standing shrine, Meière was sensitive to the Gothic Revival style of the church’s architecture. In designing the pair of angels for the inside of the doors, Meière drew from the pose of late medieval tomb figures and the liturgical vestments of the late Middle Ages. She then reinterpreted the medieval prototypes in her Art Deco style, fleshing out the angels’ faces and lending texture to their hair, feathered wings, and flaming chalices.For Meière, the remembrance shrine represented a small commission during the Great Depression, at which time she wrote to several architects about possible jobs:I can paint any type of altarpiece, wall panel or mural, but I can also design for marble, ceramics, glass mosaic, and polychrome, or decorate wood or leather. In particular, I have some ideas about leather vestibule doors, based on my experience with some in the Nebraska Capitol. As to price, I am willing to take what the job can pay. . . . Last winter I did a pair of angels on the doors of a shrine at St. Thomas’ for $259. . . . That is not my ideal price, but I’m willing to do any type of job, no matter how small.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>

Saint Thomas Church New York

Two Angels

All that remains of the original commission are Meière’s sketches and a photograph showing her design on the theater’s facade.

For the 49th Street facade of the RKO Center Theatre (razed in 1954), Hildreth Meière depicted Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth, a sculpture measuring 18 x 35 feet. As he had done with Meière’s Dance, Drama and Song on the facade of Radio City Music Hall, Oscar B. Bach fabricated her design in mixed metal and enamel. Bach “beat them into shape in the manner of a silversmith.”1 He then added vitreous enamel colors to the figures by grinding fragments of colored glass into powder, mixing the powder with water, and applying the mixture evenly to the metal surface. During the firing that followed, the particles of glass powder fused to form a thin, colored glaze of glass enamel that adhered to the metal surface.In 1988, sculptor Gary Sussman, using a different technique from Bach, created a sculpture based on one of Meière’s watercolor studies for Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth. His cast bas relief can be seen in the west concourse of Rockefeller Center at the subway access level:

RKO Center Theatre

Radio and Television Encompassing the Earth

&nbsp;Temple Emanu-El is the largest synagogue in the world, seating 2,500 people. Designed by Kohn, Butler, and Stein, its Moorish-Romanesque facade symbolizes a mingling of Eastern and Western cultures. Associate architects Mayers, Murray &amp; Phillip were responsible for the interior decoration and enlisted Hildreth Meière to provide Byzantine-style glass mosaics for the eight-story-high arch of the main sanctuary, which encases the altar and the Ark housing the Torah scrolls on the eastern wall.The Ark is designed to look like an open Torah scroll. Meière enclosed the marble frame with a floral border in glass mosaic and added colorful inserts. Her designs differ from the geometric patterns on the arch columns and the designs in the narthex at St. Bartholomew’s Church, reflecting her versatility within the Art Deco style.Meière incorporated Judaic symbols into a complex, geometric, Art Deco pattern on vertical bands, representing eleven symbols, including the Tree of Life, Menorah, Star of David, and Wedding Canopy. Her sophisticated designs in bright colors and vibrant shades of gold leaf are intricate, with no repeats among the vertical bands. The black-and-white chevron border was inspired by Sioux quillwork and beadwork.Meière’s mosaics were fabricated in Berlin by Pühl &amp; Wagner and installed by Ravenna Mosaics. In 1928, Meière and Francis Mayers visited the Berlin factory, where Meière learned about the mosaic-making process. Her cartoons for the designs remain in Berlin, part of the Pühl &amp; Wagner, Heinersdorff Company Archive.Meière wrote, "It is always a pleasant shock to me to find how far superior the finished craft work is to the cartoons. This is true for every medium for which I have designed and makes me realize how much lies in the beauty of the material itself, the value of its texture, the character of its surface and color."<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>When the mosaics were cleaned in 2005, only six of the millions of tesserae became loose, attesting to the fine quality of Ravenna Mosaic’s installation.

Temple Emanu-El

Floral and geometric designs + Judaic symbols

Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue designed Rockefeller Memorial Chapel in 1919, but he died two years before the cornerstone was laid in 1926. His successor firm Bertram Goodhue Associates hired Hildreth Meière to decorate the chapel, and R. Guastavino to execute the decoration. Goodhue’s successor firm, Meière, and Guastavino had been working together on Meière’s designs in glazed ceramic tile at the Nebraska State Capitol.Rockefeller Chapel represents the first time that Guastavino set Meière’s colorful designs in glazed ceramic tile into the vaults and ceiling of a Gothic-style building. For the apse ceiling, ribs and vaults Meière represented St. Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of the Creatures.In celebrating the interconnectedness of all creatures, the Canticle of the Creatures symbolizes unity and peace. Meière’s individual medallions symbolize the earthly and heavenly realms. Medallions for the earthly realm include images of the sun, moon, water, fire, plants, trees, fish, snake, bird, and lion. For the heavenly realm, Meière depicted angels playing a harp, drum, pipes, trumpet, triangle, and cymbals. The images of the earthly and heavenly realms alternate in groups of three.&nbsp;Meière’s hexagonal-shaped medallions containing individual images in colorful, glazed ceramic tile set into a ground of beige Akoustolith tile recall her more elaborate narrative scenes within hexagonal medallions on the ceiling of the Senate Chamber in Nebraska. There, the strength of her narrative scenes allows them to stand out against the beige Akoustolith tile ground, which was required to cover fifty percent of the ceiling in order to maintain the acoustic properties of the space. Meière’s predilection for Sioux quillwork and beadwork designs led her to incorporate them into her border designs for religious institutions. In designing borders for the ribs of the vaults at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, she adapted the Sioux people’s continuous repeat-patterns of yellow and black triangles and border of black and white chevrons.Meière repeated the black and white chevron pattern on the arch along the eastern wall at Temple Emanu-El in New York that she decorated the following year.

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

Canticle of the Creatures

Architect Philip Frohman asked Hildreth Meière to design a Resurrection mosaic in the crypt chapel of Washington National Cathedral. Having just completed a stained glass window for St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York, Meière used a similar contract for this project, with staged payments: 30% upon signing, 30% upon manufacturing, 30% upon delivery, and 10% after installation.Frohman critiqued Meière’s initial design, preferring a static figure of Christ over a motion-filled one. He made suggestions about color and proportions. Meière adjusted her design accordingly. Ravenna Mosaics fabricated the mosaic. When it was fifty percent complete, Meière visited St. Louis and reported: I returned from a very satisfactory visit to St. Louis last night. The mosaics, I think, are really fine, and are completed well past the halfway mark—the figure of Christ, the sleeping soldiers, with cliffs beyond, half the angel and a good deal of sky are completed..<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a>In preparation for the installation, Heuduck wrote to Frohman asking for “browncoat for the Resurrection Chapel mosaics ¾” thick, one part cement, one part lime, three parts sharp sand.” This undercoat needed to be scored before it set.Meière expected the Ravenna Mosaic Company’s installation to take from one week to ten days: I will be down the following week, when they are ready to take the paper off. Until that time there would be nothing for me to do. The eventual “doing” will be supervising the staining of the light joints.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[2]&nbsp;</a>Following the installation, Meière studied how to light the apse to show the details of the mosaic off to best advantage. Meière’s received her final payment for the apse mosaic together with a note: “You would certainly be gratified to hear the many very favorable comments which your work in the apse is constantly evoking.”<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[3]</a>

Chapel of the Resurrection, half-dome of apse

Washington National Cathedral

Resurrection

Architect Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue gave Hildreth Meière her first major architectural commission, the decoration of the Great Hall of the National Academy of Sciences. She intuitively grasped the collaborative role that Goodhue required. Her job was to enhance his vision of a building by depicting an iconography in visually striking symbols that would convey the building’s purpose and be integral to the architecture. The iconography of the dome is the History of Science as Known in 1922. On the pendentives, Meière depicted the Four Elements. Lastly, Meière decorated the arch soffits or undersides of the arches symbols of the Four Ancient Academies of Science: Accademia dei Lincei, Rome; the Royal Society of London; Académie des Sciences, Paris; and Museum of Alexandria, together with examples of their achievements. For the Accademia dei Lincei, Rome, Meière depicted Volta’s electric pile and Galileo’s telescope; for the Royal Society of London, Newton’s prism and Watt’s steam engine; for the Académie des Sciences, Paris, Daguerre’s camera, and the flask in which Pascal weighed air; and for the Museum of Alexandria, pyramids and and the great lighthouse of Alexandria.2Goodhue died in April 1924, just days before the dedication of the National Academy. Meière readily acknowledged her debt to him:<blockquote>Goodhue believed that the great building would result from the architect who had found the right sculptor and the right painter....he had no regular painter, and he said to me when I first worked for him, ‘I’ve been looking for you for years.’ I only did three jobs for him, but the association with him and his ideas were a determining factor in my work and career.<a href="https://culturenow.org/people/hildreth-meiere?name=Hildreth_Meiere">[1]</a></blockquote>

National Academy of Sciences

Seals of the Four Ancient Academies of Science + History of Science as Known in 1922 + Four Elements

For the two side altars at Fordham University Church, Hildreth Meière painted Saints Aloysius, John Berchmans, and Stanislaus Kostka and the Holy Family. Today the paintings hang in the main sanctuary of the church, although they are no longer placed above altars. Meière painted her full-scale color cartoon for the Holy Family in gouache on brown paper using gold paint to indicate the background. She applied strips of gold foil to distinguish the halos of Mary, Joseph, and the Christ Child.&nbsp;Fordham University recently restored Meière’s cartoon for the Holy Family. It is on view in the William D. Walsh Family Library, together with her full-scale color studies for the right and left side panels of the main altarpiece, Our Lady Mediatrix of All Graces and Saints.

Fordham University Chruch

Holy Family + Three Jesuit Saints

Transfiguration was her first collaboration with Bertram Goodhue. They would go on to work on other projects together.

Six Days of Creation

One Wall Street (originally the Irving Trust Company Building, then the Bank of New York Building after 1988, and now known as the BNY Mellon Building since 2007), is a bank headquarters building that remains one of the finest Art-Deco-style skyscrapers in Lower Manhattan, New York City.The building replaced three previous structures. It is 654 feet (199 m) tall and consists of two sections. The original 50-story building with a 36-story annex to the south. The facade, made of limestone, contains slight inwardly-curved bays with fluting to resemble curtains. On the lower stories are narrow windows with mullions, as well as ornate entrances. The massing of 1 Wall Street incorporates numerous small setbacks, and the top of the original building consists of a freestanding tower. The corners of the original building consist of chamfers, while the top of the tower has fluted windowless bays. The facade of the annex is designed in a style evocative of the original structure. Inside is an ornate main lobby with flaming-colored mosaic walls designed by Hildreth Meière.

Inside, the flaming mosaic walls designed by Mildred Meière.

 Walker also stated that in 1 Wall Street's design, he "tried to superimpose one rhythm upon a basic rhythm", and as such, he treated the facade as a series of "rhythmic motifs" in different sizes.  

1 Wall Street

 The Great Crash of 1929: Tour of the Financial District ends on Wall Street in front of the Trump Building, formerly the Bank of Manhattan building. Richard describes the turbulent ownership histories of many of the buildings on Wall Street and the difficulties associated with owning and leasing a skyscraper. James relates anecdotes about the Trump Building, where he personally worked for 15 years. 

RKO Building, located in the lobby; enter from sunken plaza

A T+ T Long Distance Building

Hildreth Meiere always wanted to be an artist. She was born in San Francisco and studied at the California Institute for the Arts. Her mother took her to Italy in 1911; she was inspired by the frescoed walls. She moved to New York and studied at the Arts Student League. She was an unmistakable New York blue blood, invariably photographed in her ever-present pearls.&nbsp;She was active in many cultural organizations. She was the 1st VP of the Architectural League for six terms, received its gold medal in Mural Painting, Director of the Municipal Art Society, 1st Woman on the NY City Art Commission and received the 1956 Fine Arts Medal of the National AIA. Oddly enough her first job was the dome for the Great Hall of the Nebraska State Capitol with Bertram Goodhue. &nbsp;Always the Blue Blood, she was known for wearing pearls. &nbsp;She executed more than 100 commissions during her career. &nbsp;Very witty and engaging she enjoyed attending many events ranging from lectures to boxing matches. Invited to a black-tie dinner of the New York City Arts Commission as its first female member, “she wore a black tie,” Ms. Dunn said, “with the lowest-cut long black evening dress.”

Invited to a black tie dinner of the New York City Arts Commission as its first female member, she wore a black tie with the lowest cut long black evening dress

Hildreth Meiere

SITES