Cass Gilbert (November 24, 1859 – May 17, 1934) was an American architect.Urbanielli, Elissa (ed.) "Broadway–Chambers Building Designation Report" New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (January 14, 1992), pp. 1 & 4. "...designed by the prominent architect, Cass Gilbert ... he went on to enjoy an illustrious career of national extent..."Robins, Anthony W. "Woolworth Building Designation Report" New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission (April 12, 1983) p. 6. "Cass Gilbert ... was one of the most important architects to work in New York." An early proponent of skyscrapers, his works include the Woolworth Building, the United States Supreme Court Building, the state capitols of Minnesota, Arkansas, and West Virginia, the Detroit Public Library, and the Saint Louis Art Museum and Public Library. His public buildings in the Beaux Arts style reflect the optimistic American sense that the nation was heir to 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.
Gilbert was a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order. His design of the new Supreme Court building in 1935, with its classical lines and small size, contrasted sharply with the large federal buildings along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which he disliked.Geoffrey Blodgett, "Cass Gilbert, Architect: Conservative at Bay," Journal of American History, December 1985, Vol. 72 Issue 3, pp. 615–636 in JSTOR
Architectural historian Margaret Heilbrun said that "Gilbert's pioneering buildings injected vitality into skyscraper design, and his 'Gothic skyscraper,' epitomized by the Woolworth Building, profoundly influenced architects during the first decades of the twentieth century."Margaret Heilbrun, Inventing the skyline: the architecture of Cass Gilbert (Columbia U.P. 2000) p xxxv Historians Christen and Flanders wrote that his reputation among architectural critics went into eclipse during the age of modernism, but has since rebounded because of "respect for the integrity and classic beauty of his masterworks".Barbara S. Christen and Steven Flanders, eds. Cass Gilbert, Life and Work: Architect of the Public Domain (2001) p 72
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 General Samuel Augustus Gilbert was a Union veteran of the American Civil War and a surveyor for the United States Coast Survey. His uncle was Union General Charles Champion Gilbert. When he was nine, Gilbert's family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was raised by his mother after his father died. Cass was raised Presbyterian. He attended preparatory school but dropped out of Macalester College. He began 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.
Minnesota career
Gilbert worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead & White before starting a practice in St. Paul with James Knox Taylor. He was commissioned to design a number of railroad stations, including those in Anoka, Willmar and the extant Little Falls depot, all in Minnesota. As a Minnesota architect he was best known for his design of the Minnesota State Capitol and the downtown St. Paul Endicott Building. His goal was to move to New York City and gain a national reputation, but he remained in Minnesota from 1882 until 1898. Many of his Minnesota buildings are still standing, including more than a dozen private residences (especially those on St. Paul's Summit Avenue), several churches featuring rich textures and colors, resort summer homes, and warehouses.Irish, Sharon. "West Hails East: Cass Gilbert in Minnesota" Minnesota History, April 1993, Vol. 53 Issue 5, pp 196–207
National reputation The completion of the Minnesota capitol gave Gilbert his national reputation and in 1898 he permanently moved his base to New York. His breakthrough commission was the design of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City, which now houses the George Gustav Heye Center. Gilbert served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1910 to 1916.Thomas E. Luebke, ed., Civic Art: A Centennial History of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, 2013): Appendix B, p. 545. In 1906 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an associate member, and became a full academician in 1908. Gilbert served as president of the academy from 1926 to 1933. He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1934.
He was a trustee of the Carnegie Institution from 1924 until he died in 1934.
Historical impact
Gilbert was 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: artist 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 at Austin, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge, railroad stations (including the New Haven Union Station, 1920), 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. Gilbert's body of work as a whole 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 a skyscraper."Letter to Ralph Adams Cram, 1920 quoted in Goldberger, Paul (2001) Cass Gilbert, "Remembering the turn-of-the-century urban visionary", Architectural Digest, February issue, pp. 106–102
Gilbert's two buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus, Sutton Hall (1918) and Battle Hall (1911), are 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 Texas.
Archives Gilbert's drawings and correspondence are preserved at the New-York Historical Society, the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota, and the Library of Congress.
Notable works
Saint Paul Seminary, Saint Paul, Minnesota. Cretin Hall, Loras Hall, a gymnasium (later the Service Center), a classroom building, the refectory building, and the administration building in 1894 were commissioned by James J. Hill. Cretin and the Service Center no longer stand as of 2024, on the University of St. Thomas (Minnesota) campus, as they were torn down to build a hockey/basketball arena. Minnesota State Capitol, Saint Paul, Minnesota, 1895–1905. Designed in High Renaissance style, the building is not 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 St. 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 as well. 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 lychgate 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. St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, 120 8th Street S., Moorhead, Minnesota, 1898–99 Northern Pacific Railway Depot, 701 Main Street, Fargo, North Dakota, 1898. The Broadway-Chambers Building (277 Broadway), Manhattan, 1899–1900. Gilbert's first building in New York City. Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, Manhattan, 1902–1907. Facing Bowling Green park in Lower Manhattan Essex County Veterans Courthouse, Newark, 1904 Saint Louis Art Museum (Palace of the Fine Arts), St. Louis, Missouri, 1904. Built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis and the only major building of the fair built as a permanent structure. 90 West Street, Manhattan, 1905–1907. Severely damaged during the September 11, 2001 attacks, this building in lower Manhattan has since been completely restored. Metals Bank Building, Butte, Montana, 1906. Commissioned by F. Augustus Heinze, this eight-story low-rise building has an internal steel frame. It was the second to be built in Butte after the 1901 Hirbour Building, which also has eight stories. A series of master plans for the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, 1907. Designs for 12 local stations on the Harlem River Branch of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in the Bronx and Westchester County, New York, 1908. Not all were built, and only four were extant in 2014, all in the Bronx: the Westchester Avenue and Bartow stations are in ruins, and the Morris Park and Hunts Point stations have been converted to other uses. All ceased to be used as railroad stations by the late 1930s. Pelham Manor station in Westchester County was demolished in 1955 to make way for Interstate 95. Spalding Building, Portland, Oregon, 1911. A 12-story early skyscraper based on the construction principles of a classical column. Battle Hall, Austin, Texas, 1911. For the University of Texas at Austin. New Haven Free Public Library, Mary E. Ives Memorial Library At the corner of Elm and Temple Streets in downtown New Haven, architect Gilbert designed the brick and marble building to harmonize with the traditional architecture of New Haven, and especially with the United Church nearby. The building was formally dedicated to the City of New Haven on May 27, 1911. Kelsey Building, Trenton, New Jersey, 1911. Built by Henry Cooper Kelsey as a memorial to his wife. Now used by Thomas Edison State University. St. Louis Public Library, St. Louis, Missouri, 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.