Queer Places:
540 W 112th St, New York, NY 10025
40 Morningside Dr, New York, NY 10025
12 W 40th St, New York, NY 10018
4 W 40th St, New York, NY 10018
114 E 81st St, New York, NY 10028
225 E 57th St, New York, NY 10022
27 W 85th St, New York, NY 10024
Hettie Rhoda Meade (November 5, 1881 – February, 1973) was a New York interior designer hired to decorate the interior of the Gasparella Inn, Boca Grande, Florida, in 1915. She is also credited with decorating and furnishing Plant House, a residential hall at the Connecticut College for Women, also in 1915.
Some of Meade's other commissions include the west lounge (including the writing room) at the Belleview Hotel in Belair, Florida; the new music and card rooms at the Griswold Hotel at Eastern Point, Groton, Connecticut; the Shinnecosset Country Club, also in Groton; and the Buckwood Inn (now the Shawnee Inn), in Shawnee on Delaware, Pennsylvania. Meade was also a recognized collector, dealer, and expert in Japanese prints, and a published author (Furnishing the Small Home).
She was born in Oswego, New York on November 5, 1881, the daughter of John Oliphant Meade (1850-1917) and Alice Mary Littlefield (1860-1926). Hettie was the second born, just one year after her sister Helen. By 1900, the family was living in Brooklyn with the maternal grandparents. Meade was the niece of Maude Baillard, a journalist living in Tampa, Florida.
By 1906, Meade had established a business for herself as a dealer in Japanese prints and "various Japanese art works" with a gallery at 40 Morningside Drive and lives at 540 W 112th Street.
By 1910, she is living back in Oswego as a boarder in the home of Albert and Alice Radcliffe. But in 1915, she's back in New York advertising her business in "interior furnishings and antiques" at 12 West 40th Street with one assistant in her employ, Miss Ruth M. Cutler.
Meade never married and lived by herself, as the 1920 Census reports that she was living alone in Manhattan. That same year, she travelled to Antwerp, Belgium aboard the Finland. Throughout the 1920s and 30s, her residence is reported as 4 West 40th Street. By the war years, she had moved to 114 East 81st Street, with her business at 225 East 57th Street. By 1960, she had moved to 27 West 85th Street.
In 1964 she sold her collection of Japanese art, representing masters of Ukiyo-E, at the Brooklyn Museum.
She died in February 1973 at the age of 91.
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