What do Christ Church and Rockefeller Center have in common? Both have sculptures by Lee Lawrie, the renowned American sculptor. Inside Christ Church, Mr. Lawrie’s statues of St. Peter and St. Paul have gazed down at the main altar, as if lost in silent wonder and contemplation, from their niches flanking the reredos, ever since 1909. These sculptures are quite stylized, as befits Mr. Lawrie, who in the 1920’s and 1930’s became a leading proponent of the very popular Art Deco style. However, some Christ Church parishioners declare that each sculpture has its own distinct personality.

Also for Christ Church, Mr. Lawrie carved the bowl of the stone baptismal font. It features four panels with the traditional symbols of the four Evangelists: the man of St. Mathew, the winged lion of St. Mark, the ox of St. Luke, and the eagle of St. John. These were carved to the designs of Henry M. Congdon, a busy church architect whose New York firm presumably also designed and made the altar and reredos, the beautiful limestone paneling in the chancel with its credence shelf and seats for the bishop and other clergy, and the pulpit and lectern.

At Rockefeller Center, Mr. Lawrie’s best-known work is the two- ton bronze statue of Atlas holding up the heavens. This was a collaboration with fellow sculptor Rene Chambellan. It stands at 630 Fifth Avenue outside the recessed entrance to the International Building directly across the avenue from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Controversy was no stranger to art at Rockefeller Center and when this sculpture was installed in 1937, some observers imagined in Atlas’s face a resemblance to the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Less well known than Atlas, whose image has appeared on U.S. postage stamps and in New York City’s tourist advertising, is that Mr. Lawrie made numerous other sculptural embellishments to Rockefeller Center. Two of the most striking are the brightly painted and gilded “Wisdom” and “Sound” at the entrance to the RCA Building (now known as the GE Building.) These works are in the full-blown Art Deco style that we admire in some of the city’s finest buildings. They exemplify the best in New York.

Just a few doors up Fifth Avenue from Rockefeller Center may be seen the magnificent stone reredos behind the main altar at St. Thomas Church. Working with Bertran Grosvenor Goodhue and Ralph Adams Cram, the church’s architects, Mr. Lawrie designed the 60 figures in the reredos. They were carved on Dunville stone from Downsville, Wisconsin. Mr. Lawrie also did the church’s striking World War I memorial.

Lee Lawrie (1877-1962) was born in Rixdorf, Germany, coming to the U.S. at the age of six with his family. He worked for a time in the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and although he regarded himself as a self-taught sculptor, he did earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Yale University and taught there from 1909 to 1919. He is considered to be one of America’s finest architectural sculptors and his works may be seen in public buildings all over the country, among them the State Capitol at Lincoln, Nebraska; the John Adams Building of the Library of Congress and the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.; the Los Angeles Public Library and the City Hall in St. Paul, Minnesota. He conceived his statue of George Washington in the Washington National Cathedral not as general, president or Roman statesman, but simply as a lay Episcopalian about to attend services at Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia.