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Cass Gilbert
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- not to be confused with American architect C.P.H. Gilbert
Cass Gilbert (November 24, 1859 – May 17, 1934) was a pioneering American architect. An early proponent of skyscrapers in works like the Woolworth Building, Gilbert was also responsible for numerous museums (Saint Louis Art Museum) and libraries (Saint Louis Public Library), state capitol buildings (the Minnesota, Arkansas and West Virginia State Capitols, for example) as well as public architectural icons like the United States Supreme Court building.
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Encyclopedia
- not to be confused with American architect C.P.H. Gilbert
Cass Gilbert (November 24, 1859 – May 17, 1934) was a pioneering American architect. An early proponent of skyscrapers in works like the Woolworth Building, Gilbert was also responsible for numerous museums (Saint Louis Art Museum) and libraries (Saint Louis Public Library), state capitol buildings (the Minnesota, Arkansas and West Virginia State Capitols, for example) as well as public architectural icons like the United States Supreme Court building. His public buildings in the Beaux Arts style reflect the optimistic American sense that the nation was the heir of Greek democracy, Roman law and Renaissance humanism. Gilbert's achievements were recognized in his lifetime; he served as president of the American Institute of Architects in 1908-09.
Early life
Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the middle of three sons, and was named after the statesman Lewis Cass, to whom he was distantly related. Gilbert's father was a surveyor for what was then known as the United States Coast Survey. At the age of nine, Gilbert's family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota where he was raised by his mother after his father died. After attending preparatory school in nearby Minneapolis, Gilbert dropped out of Macalester College, before beginning his architectural career at age 17 by joining the Abraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul. In 1878 Gilbert enrolled in the architecture program at MIT.
Professional career
Gilbert later worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before starting a practice in St. Paul with James Knox Taylor. He won a series of house and office-building commissions in Minnesota: the Endicott Building in St. Paul is still regarded as a gem, and many of his noteworthy houses still stand on St. Paul's Summit Avenue. His break-through commission was the design of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City (now housing the George Gustav Heye Center).
Name confusion with C.P.H. Gilbert
Cass Gilbert is often confused with Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert (C.P.H.), another prominent architect of the time. Cass Gilbert designed the famous Woolworth Building skyscraper on Broadway for Frank W. Woolworth, while Woolworth's personal mansion was designed by C.P.H. Gilbert. The Ukrainian Institute building on Manhattan's 5th Avenue is the work of C.P.H. Gilbert, and often incorrectly attributed to Cass Gilbert.
Historical impact
Gilbert is considered a skyscraper pioneer; when designing the Woolworth Building he moved into unproven ground — though he certainly was aware of the ground-breaking work done by Chicago architects on skyscrapers and once discussed merging firms with the legendary Daniel Burnham — and his technique of cladding a steel frame became the model for decades. Modernists embraced his work: Alfred Stieglitz immortalized the Woolworth Building in a famous series of photographs and John Marin painted it several times; even Frank Lloyd Wright praised the lines of the building, though he decried the ornamentation.
Gilbert was one of the first celebrity architects in America, designing skyscrapers in New York City and Cincinnati, campus buildings at Oberlin College and the University of Texas, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge, various railroad stations (including the New Haven Union Station), and the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.. His reputation declined among some professionals during the age of Modernism, but he was on the design committee that guided and eventually approved the modernist design of Manhattan's groundbreaking Rockefeller Center: when considering Gilbert's body of works as whole, it is more eclectic than many critics admit. In particular, his Union Station in New Haven lacks the embellishments common of the Beaux-Arts period, and contains the simple lines common in Modernism.
Gilbert wrote to a colleague, "I sometimes wish I had never built the Woolworth Building because I fear it may be regarded as my only work and you and I both know that whatever it may be in dimension and in certain lines it is after all only skyscraper."
Gilbert's two buildings for the University of Texas campus in Austin, Sutton Hall (1918) and Battle Hall (1911), are widely recognized by architectural historians as among the finest works of architecture in the state. Designed in a Spanish-Mediterranean revival style, the two buildings became the stylistic basis for the later expansion of the university in the 1920s and 1930s and helped popularize the style throughout the state.
Notable works
 - Saint Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. Cretin Hall, Loras Hall, the Service Center, a classroom building, the refectory building, the administration building in 1894, and Grace Hall in 1913 were commissioned by James J. Hill. Only Cretin, Loras, the Service Center, and Grace still stand.
- Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul, 1895–1905. Designed in High Renaissance style, the building is not merely a replica of the United States Capitol. Local newspapers made a fuss when Gilbert sent to Georgia for marble, but the result, in which a hemispherical dome caps a high drum not unlike that of Saint Peter's Basilica, crowning a building housing the bicameral legislature and the state supreme court, was so nobly handsome that West Virginia and Arkansas contracted for Gilbert capitols too. Its brick dome is held in hoops of steel.
- St. Clement's Episcopal Church, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1895. Designed in the traditional English country church style, with a lych gate and close, bell tower, and parish hall (renovated in 2006). Funded by a generous donation from Mrs. Theodore Eaton, widow of the rector of St. Clement's Episcopal Church in New York City. Includes original furniture, baptismal font, encaustic tile floor in choir, elaborate rood screen, linen-fold paneling, and parquet oak floor in sanctuary. The altar features Tiffany Studios stained glass window depicting the empty Cross.
- (Harry F. Sinclair House, 5th Ave and 79th St, 1898, built for Isaac D, Fletcher, often attributed to Cass Gilbert, was designed by Charles Pierrepont Henry (C.P.H.) Gilbert. It now houses the Ukrainian Institute of America.)
- The Broadway-Chambers Building (277 Broadway), 1899–1900. Gilbert's first building in New York City.
- Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, facing Bowling Green park in Lower Manhattan, 1902–1907.
- Saint Louis Art Museum, known as the Palace of the Fine Arts, built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. The Art Museum was the only major building of the fair built as a permanent structure.
- 90 West Street, New York City, 1905–1907. Severely damaged during the September 11, 2001 attacks, the building has since been completely restored.
- Metals Bank, Butte, Montana, 1906, Commissioned by third Copper King F. Augustus Heinze. 7 story, internal steel frame "Skyscraper". The second to be built in Butte after the 1901 Hirbour Building (8 stories).
- A series of master plans for the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, 1907.
- The Spalding Building, Portland, 1911. A 12-story early skyscraper based on the construction principles of a classical column.
- Battle Hall, The University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1911.
- Saint Louis Public Library, 1912. The main library for the city's public library system, in a severe classicizing style, has an oval central pavilion surrounded by four light courts. The outer facades of the free-standing building are of lightly rusticated Maine granite. The Olive Street front is disposed like a colossal arcade, with contrasting marble bas-relief panels. A projecting three-bay central block, like a pared-down triumphal arch, provides a monumental entrance. At the rear the Central Library faced a sunken garden. The interiors feature some light-transmitting glass floors. The ceiling of the Periodicals Room is modified from Michelangelo's ceiling in the Laurentian Library.
- Woolworth Building, New York City, 1913. A Gothic skyscraper clad in glazed terracotta panels, it was the tallest building in the world when built. Bas reliefs in the lobby depict Woolworth and Gilbert, Woolworth holding nickels and dimes.
- PNC Tower, Cincinnati. Originally built as the headquarters for The Union Central Life Insurance Company.
- Fountain in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at the intersection of Routes 35 and 33, 1914–16. This fountain was designed and donated to the town by Cass Gilbert, who lived in the town for a period. In 2004, a drunk driver crashed into the fountain and completely destroyed it; a replica has since been completed.
- Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, 1917.
- Chase Headquarters Building, Waterbury, CT, 1917-1919. This building was designed as the headquarters of the Chase Company and forms part of a unique concentration of Gilbert's architecture comprising the Waterbury City Hall, the Chase Bank Building, the company headquarters and the Elton Hotel.
- Brooklyn Army Terminal, Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, NY, 1918.
- The Detroit Public Library, main branch, 1921.
- The First Division Monument, President's Park, Washington DC, 1924.
- West Virginia State Capitol, Charleston, West Virginia, 1924–1932.
- The James Scott Memorial Fountain, Belle Isle, Detroit, MI, 1925.
- Plans for cladding the George Washington Bridge support towers, New York City, in masonry, 1926. Not carried out.
- New York Life Insurance Building, 1926.
- US Embassy Building, Ottawa, Ontario, 1932.
- United States Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C., 1932–1935, Gilbert's last major project, guided to completion by his son, Cass Gilbert Jr. He died a year before it was completed. A vast Roman temple in the Corinthian order is penetrated by a cross range articulated with pilasters in very low relief. The central tablet in the richly sculpted frieze reads EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER LAW. His design for the U.S. Supreme Court chambers was based upon his design for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals at the state capitol in Charleston. The pediment sculptures Liberty attended by order and Authority (great lawgivers Moses, Confucius, and Solon are on the West Portico) were executed by Hermon Atkins MacNeil.
Image gallery
Archives
Gilbert's drawings and correspondence are preserved at the New-York Historical Society, the Minnesota Historical Society and the Library of Congress.
External links
- - buildings early in his career
- article by Sharon Irish
Architecture
Archival collections
- Archives Center, National Museum of American History
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- Abstract of the Gilbert papers.
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