Hildreth Meiere: Mistress of Art Deco

Not a few readers of our report on last Sunday’s Traditional Mass at University Church at Fordham remarked on the splendid reredos above the main altar. These panels from 1942 are the work of one of the premiere American Catholic artists of that era: Hildreth Meiere. She flourished from the 1920’s through the 1940’s as one of the leading decorators of the wave of Art Deco architecture sweeping over America. Her art can be found – well, almost everywhere. Just in a 10-15 minute walk from my office we find her work at St. Bartholomew’s church, St.Thomas’s on 5th Avenue, Temple Emanu-el, the Lady Chapel of St Patrick’s Cathedral and, of course, Rockefeller Center. Heading downtown, we have her unbelievable red flaming mosaic decoration of the old Irving Trust building at One Wall Street. Her commissions outside the New York area were also numerous. Obviously some very well-heeled patrons admired her work; she also was a collaborator of some of the leading architects of that era, above all, Bertram Goodhue.

Any New Yorker has walked by her most visible commission a thousand times without throwing it a glance: three huge roundels decorating Radio City Music Hall.

But perhaps her most remarkable legacy are her many mosaics and murals for churches (Catholic and Anglican). In the 1920’s, for example, she provided mosaics for Bertram Goodhue’s church of St. Bartholomew.

The Seven Days of Creation in the narthex of St. Bartholomew’s

Hildreth Meiere died in 1961. Her Requiem Mass was celebrated, appropriately enough, at St. Vincent Ferrer – a masterpiece of Bertram Goodhue for whose buildings she had done some of her best work. A small but devoted band continues to keep her memory alive – there is currently an exhibit of her work at St. Bonaventure University upstate until June. Information on this exhibit can be found here:
St. Bonaventure

A house still in the possession of Hildreth Meiere’s family preserves many works and memorabilia right next door in Stamford. An excellent site provides abundant information on the artist:
LINK