New York 1939 World's Fair: AT&T Building

Detail of map from Official Guide Book – New York World's Fair 1940 showing location of the AT&T Building

For the entrance to the Bell System Exhibit in the AT&T Building, Meière designed overdoors fifty feet tall, using warm Art Deco colors. On the left door she depicted a telephone lineman; on the right, a telephone operator. Each figure is twenty-five feet high1: The gold color Meière used for the figures and telephone wires coordinates with that of the circular brass motifs at the base of the design.

The scale of Meière’s design can be seen in a black and white photograph showing a man in the foreground and another entering the building:

Telephone Lineman and Switchboard Operator

Meière wrote:

...the scale demanded by the really tremendous size of the buildings was in itself a problem which few if any of us mural painters had ever had to face. I drew a head ten feet high. I drew a doctor thirty feet tall, and the height of my “Linesman” on the Telephone Building is twenty-five feet. Sixteen-foot figures, twelve-foot figures, ten-foot figures, I drew them all and enjoyed it, feeling that the life-sized figures, of which there are thirty-five in one frieze, were practically miniatures.2

AT&T Building showing overdoors at entrance to Bell System exhibit