“Red Room” One Wall Street

The Red Room at One Wall Street, originally commissioned by the Irving Trust Company in 1931, stands as a vibrant example of American Art Deco interior design and an enduring testament to the creative partnership between architect Ralph Walker and muralist Hildreth Meière.

“I’d much prefer to work with Miss Meière than with any artist I know.”
— Ralph Walker, 1941

Timeline

1931	–	Completion of Red Room
2014	–	Bank vacates
2016	–	Restoration begins
2024	–	Landmark designation
2025	–	Printemps opens retail

Banking Room in glass mosaic
Copyright, International Hildreth Meière Association

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 & 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.1

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.2

Meière’s colorful design was fabricated in large tesserae, or pieces of glass mosaic, by Pühl & Wagner in Berlin and shipped to New York to be installed by their American affiliate, Ravenna Mosaics.3 The same firm had recently installed Meière’s designs at St. Bartholomew’s Church and Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

Sample wall panel for Banking Room in glass mosaic at the Pühl & Wagner factory

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.4

Full-scale and three-inch-scale cartoons with code 1B

Tessera stamped E2 to correspond with cartoon

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.

Restoration and Rebirth

In 2016, the “Red Room” underwent a careful restoration focused on cleaning, protecting, and repairing select areas—made possible by the discovery of original 1930s tiles, which allowed conservators to preserve the integrity of Meière and Walker’s enduring design.

While the “Red Room” temporarily served as the condominium sales gallery in 2021-2023 for One Wall Street’s residential conversion, it has been adapted as a retail space for the French luxury retailer Printemps.

This marks a symbolic and literal connection to Hildreth Meière's own ancestry. Her great-grandfather, Julius Meiere, was born in Alsace-Lorraine, France. After surviving the Napoleonic Wars, Julius immigrated to the United States via Dublin, Ireland, eventually becoming a professor of mathematics and languages in the U.S. Navy and at Yale. The Printemps residency re-establishes the “Red Room’s” link to its French roots, continuing its global narrative.

Interior Landmarking

In December 2023, Printemps partnered with Macklowe Properties, the owners of One Wall Street, to submit a petition for interior landmark designation to the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC).

At the public LPC hearing held in May 2024, multiple speakers voiced their support for the designation. These included representatives from Macklowe Properties, the International Hildreth Meière Association (IHMA), the Art Deco Society of New York (ADSNY), the New York City Landmarks Conservancy, and the Historic Districts Council (HDC).

On June 25, 2024, the “Red Room” at One Wall Street was officially designated a New York City Interior Landmark. This recognition celebrates the room as a rare and dazzling example of abstract mosaic mural work by Hildreth Meière—an extraordinary departure from traditional bank interiors and a pinnacle of American Art Deco design.

Today: A Living Work of Art

Now open to the public as part of Printemps’s U.S. flagship, the Red Room enters a new chapter as a retail destination unlike any other—a living work of art that continues to bridge cultural heritage, architectural innovation, and commercial reinvention.