New York 1939 World's Fair: Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex

Detail of map from Official Guide Book – New York World's Fair 1940 showing location of Mayer, Murray & Phillip's Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex

To-scale model of the Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Buildings with the placement of Meière's murals indicated as follows: (1) Modern Medicine (2) Primitive Man and Modern Man (3) Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine and the Dragon of Ignorance (4) Comte de Rochambeau (5) Tadeusz Kosciuszko (6) The Family (7) The School (8) The Picnic (9) Man between the Past and the Future

Hildreth Meière designed nine murals for the exterior walls of the Medicine and Public Health, Science and Education Building Complex designed by Mayers, Murray & Phillip.1 On the south facade of the larger building, she designed a mural thirty-six feet high and thirty-four feet wide depicting a doctor in a laboratory holding a test tube and pointing out all the resources of Modern Medicine, symbolized by a sterilizer, retort and test tube. Groups of ailing people to the doctor’s right underscore the need for new discoveries. The theme was in keeping with the motto of the fair: to build the world of tomorrow with the tools we have today.2

Modern Medicine showing doctor in laboratory

Modern Medicine showing people in need of medical advances

Rambusch executed Meière’s Art Deco-style mural in a medium called keim, which reacted with mineral substrates in the wall to become a part of it, thereby creating a poster-like effect. This expensive German product did not solve the problem of fading murals. As Meière herself pointed out:

. . . no satisfactory, permanent outdoor paint to be used on a surface containing lime has yet been developed. . . . In plain English, the murals are fading.3