Municipal Center

Health and Welfare in east open-air courtyard

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 1941:1

A social worker helps a mother with two children

A physician and nurse give medical aid to a family

Food inspection

Two chemists in a laboratory

A municipal hospital

A geriatrics ward

Two families apply for social services

An inspector watches bricklayers

A physician examines two patients

A couple applies to adopt a boy

Klimo, a sculptor at the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, executed the figures in contrasting blocks of color in high and sunken relief:

Hildreth Meière and Klimo in front of a section of Health and Welfare at the Atlantic Terra Cotta Company, Perth Amboy, New Jersey, 1941

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.2