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Broadway-Chambers Building, New York
1 2018-01-02T14:37:40-08:00 George White cb0542322fa4ae8e07654b15060808a2ceb373c6 14634 1 Broadway-Chambers Building, New York. Cass Gilbert, 1899-1900. plain 2018-01-02T14:37:40-08:00 George White cb0542322fa4ae8e07654b15060808a2ceb373c6This page is referenced by:
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About the Architect
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Cass Gilbert's earlier works before the West Street Building
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Cass Gilbert grew up fatherless from the age of nine in Saint Paul, Minnesota. While not educated himself at the École des Beaux-Arts, he studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1878-1879 under Eugène Létang, who was Beaux-Arts trained. Gilbert said of his training: “The Training that is desirable in France is not always usable in America.”[1] Following his studies at MIT, Gilbert undertook a sketching tour of Europe, and saved many of his drawings and watercolors for future architectural reference.[2] Throughout his travels he expanded his repertoire, saying “Each day shows me something that improves and enlarges my stock of information” and that he sought to become knowledgeable about “all the principal forms of architecture.”[3] His training allowed him to get a job at the McKim, Mead and White architecture firm in 1880, where he worked as Stanford White’s assistant.[4] Gilbert may not have had a signature style of architecture, but he came to have a signature style of architecture firm: a combination of Beaux-Arts style atelier and modern office. He was a modern commercial architect unlike artist-architects or gentlemen architects of earlier generations.[5]
Gilbert returned to his hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1882, where he represented McKim, Mead and White in the West, before opening an architectural firm with partner James Knox Taylor in 1885. Gilbert and Taylor aimed to show professionalism in their line of work in order to prove to locals the value of hiring formally trained architects over builders.[6] Gilbert started out building small-scale homes and commercial structures in Saint Paul, as large-scale government projects were given to big-name architects and large companies had in-house architects[7]. In 1891, Gilbert and Taylor dissolved their partnership and continued their work separately.
By the mid-1890s, Gilbert had “synthesized medieval, Renaissance, and contemporary vocabularies to provide clients with up-to-date buildings characterized by traditional stylistic features.”[8] His buildings were not always arbitrarily different but were frequently influenced by contemporaneous comparanda across the country. From his time working with McKim Mead and White, he was able to bring the modern eclecticism of the Northeast to Minnesota. As Gilbert's reputation grew, he began to receive more significant commissions. In 1895, the State of Minnesota commissioned Gilbert, by then the most famous local architect, to conceive plans for the new State Capitol Building in St Paul. He moved tentatively to New York in the middle of construction as his business had dried up locally due to a dispute over the use of Georgia marble in construction over local stone from Minnesota.[9]
Gilbert received his first East Coast commission in Boston, a metropolis with which he was familiar, having studied at MIT across the river in Cambridge. The Brazer Building was not a particularly large commission, but it was well proportioned with taller first and second storeys. Gilbert used terracotta cladding that matched limestone to save money above the third storey and he exploited the properties of the steel used in construction by replicating the corner window design of Daniel Burnham’s Flatiron Building in New York City. Where in masonry construction one would expect a strong corner pier, steel allows for there to be windows.[10] Gilbert demonstrated his ability to design for both traditional and modern construction materials.
Later, Gilbert’s commission for the Broadway-Chambers Building allowed him the opportunity to move to and stay in New York. He later compared the building’s massing and outline to Utrecht Cathedral’s tower and St Mark’s Campanile in Venice. He worked with the Fuller Construction Company on the Broadway-Chambers Building, which exposed him to the efficiencies needed in the construction of tall buildings in New York.[11]
In 1899, Gilbert was awarded the contract for the U.S. Custom House in New York City.[12] He competed with architecture firm Carrère and Hastings for the commission, both of whom were educated at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The jury preferred Gilbert's design due to the very decorative nature of the design with its heavy Beaux-Arts influence. Gilbert conceived of the building as a decorated whole and made use of famous sculptors including Daniel Chester-French and used cutting-edge technology such as Catalan tile vaulting from Guastavino for the central domed space.[13] It was his first federal project, but not his last. Two years later in 1901, Gilbert designed the plan for and two buildings in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition outside St. Louis Missouri, where he played with contrasting light and dark on the façade of the festival building, a lesson he would take with him to the Woolworth Building.[14] He further evolved his approach to the tall building in the Gothic style with the Rodin Studio Apartment building in New York – where he used polychrome terracotta and Gothic elements in an attempt to animate a plain box.[15] Gilbert sought to emphasize the uniqueness of each of his projects by crafting something original and distinct.[16][1] Sharon Irish, Cass Gilbert, Architect: Modern Traditionalist (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1999), 14.[2] Ibid., 13-14.[3] Gail Fenske, The Skyscraper and the City: the Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), 84.[4] Cindy Stephani, “Cass Gilbert History,” Cass Gilbert Society, accessed 2017-12-12, www.cassgilbertsociety.org/architect/bio.html .[5] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 74.[6] Irish, Cass Gilbert, 16.[7] Ibid., 18.[8] Irish, Cass Gilbert, 20.[9] Ibid., 45-46.[10] Ibid., 50.[11] Ibid., 53-56.[12] “U.S. Custom House,” Cass Gilbert Society, accessed 2017-12-12, www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/us-custom-house/ .[13] Irish, Cass Gilbert, 64-66.[14] Ibid., 76-81.[15] Ibid., 89. This was an approach Gilbert would later use to break up the monotony of the Woolworth Building – in syncopating the verticals and mixing different traceries in the spandrels.[16] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 92-93. -
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F.W. Woolworth Company
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Businessman-architect relationship
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Frank Woolworth opened his first five-cent store in Utica, New York in 1879, but failed to maintain profitability. He opened his second store in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he argued that local Quakers knew the value of a nickel.[1] Woolworth was able to bring a big city shopping experience to small town America and took great advantage of the technological advancements of the era, especially the telegraph and the railroads in order to grow his empire.[2] Woolworth was new money in New York and being a man of taste, he argued that the opulence of his new offices at 280 Broadway demonstrated sound financial practice, and undertook a beautification and branding program throughout his empire of stores.[3] Between 1896 and 1900, this beautification and branding program allegedly increased sales by 100% by alluring passersby with a uniform, appealing look to Woolworth’s stores throughout the country.[4] However, design was a limited vehicle for conveying advertisement. Therefore, in 1900, Woolworth chose to build a new headquarters in Lancaster. Its purpose was to be the nicest building in town and to give Woolworth the image that came with it.[5]
In 1905, Woolworth incorporated his company and needed new headquarters in New York City. At the time, the Singer Building was the tallest in the world, and was straight down Broadway from Woolworth’s offices at Broadway and Chambers Street, which is also right across Broadway from Gilbert’s Broadway-Chambers Building.[6] This may have been Woolworth’s first exposure to Gilbert as an architect, and by 1910, Woolworth had asked Gilbert to design his new headquarters between Barclay Street and Park Place on Broadway.
Why did Woolworth choose Cass Gilbert? Gilbert had garnered national fame as a result of his commission for the State Capitols of Minnesota and Arkansas, as well as for his design of the US Custom House in Manhattan. Woolworth may have seen Gilbert’s work either in Minnesota when visiting his stores or at the Custom House in New York, as the Woolworth Company was the nation’s largest importer.[7] For Woolworth however, it would have been the exposure he had to Gilbert’s Broadway-Chambers Building and of utmost relevance, the West Street Building, but a few blocks away from the site of the future Woolworth Building. Woolworth approached Gilbert seeking a grander version of the West Street Building “having admired the Gothic style of that structure.”[8]
