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Cass Gilbert's Woolworth Building

Stadhuis Middelburg

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The Meaning of Gothic Gilbert was not, of course, the first architect to work in Gothic vocabulary. The neo-Gothic style had been in use throughout the United States and the UK in the mid to late 19^th Century, usually in domestic, ecclesiastic or educational buildings. By the early 20^th Century, it had begun to be used in commercial and public buildings as well, which brought to them a sense of monumentality. When used in commercial buildings, the Gothic style could invoke allusions to the commerce and trade of the Middle Ages in the Low Countries and thereby the Protestant work ethic. French architectural historian and architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc praised the Gothic style for its structural rationalism and authenticity, arguing that there are no secrets to the structure of a Gothic building. In the use of Gothic in skyscrapers, architects wanted to invoke “intense spirituality, craftsmanship and social harmony” (perhaps incorrectly) associated with the Middle Ages.[1] The Gothic style was particularly well-suited to the task of ornamenting tall buildings, as it accentuated the verticality of the buildings. In Gilbert’s West Street Building, the addition of the Gothic crown added to the verticality of the Sullivan-esque shaft.[2] Some even argued for the implementation of Gothic to “usher in a period of faith like that which Europe underwent in the Middle Ages,” but these zealots were an exception.[3]

To Gilbert
Gilbert, like most architects, wanted to express meaning in his buildings through his designs. When commissioned to design a new building for the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, D.C., Gilbert chose a classical style to evoke the democracies of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Likewise, for the West Street and Woolworth buildings, he chose to refer to the secular Gothic architecture of the Middle Ages and its connotations with commerce. In the Middle Ages, trade and craft guilds started to manifest their commercial prowess by building imposing buildings in prominent locations in cities such as Bruges and Florence.[4] Fenske argues that in his design for the West Street Building, Gilbert was directly referencing the free-trading cities of the Low Countries and their magnificent Gothic municipal buildings. By drawing The West Street Building with boats in front, Gilbert referred to New York’s origins as a mercantile city, in turn relating New York to the great medieval merchant cities of the Low Countries and relates the West Street Building to the cities’ municipal buildings. By extension, the West Street Building, like its medieval counterparts, symbolized democratic independence and the wealth associated with trade. Architecturally, Gilbert’s first plan paid direct homage to its predecessors in that it had a central tower; he aimed to connect his building to towered structures of Flemish medieval cities and aimed to emanate desirable urban qualities like “municipal dignity” grandeur and prosperity.[5] Critics lauded Gilbert’s Gothic design, and he himself asserted that the West Street Building was the latest word on the subject of the treatment of tall buildings.[6] This can be extended to his use of Gothic in the Woolworth Building, because Woolworth approached him due to his exposure to the West Street Building.

Furthermore, there is some possibility that Gilbert may have had a personal preference to the Gothic style, as evidenced by the fact that the first building he ever designed was rendered in a Gothic-inspired fashion: his mother’s house in St. Paul, Minnesota. Trained in the Beaux-Arts manner, he paid great attention to the compositions of his buildings, both from nearby and from a disatnce. Accordingly, at the West Street and Woolworth buildings, Gilbert may have used his many sketches from his travels through Europe to decide what to emulate, both for outlining and detailing.[7] Its skeletal structure evident, and Gothic elements being seemingly integral led one critic to believe that Gilbert intuitively understood the Gothic style, and instead of creating a neo-Gothic building, had unknowingly created an authentic Gothic structure in the form of the Woolworth Building.[8]

To Woolworth
The Gothic style was also important to Woolworth. His house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was designed in the style, as most mansions in the area imitated the Gothic embellishment of the Cornelius Vanderbilt II Mansion. Furthermore, after a buying trip to Europe where he saw many architectural landmarks along the way, Woolworth returned to New York and saw the efficacy of the West Street Building. It is unsurprising therefore that Woolworth would have seen the West Street Building as a model for his new headquarters on the corner of Park Place and Broadway. He first proposed to Gilbert that he wanted his new building to be Gothic in style and based off the Victoria Tower from the Palace of Westminster in London.[9] Woolworth may have liked the associations it would have brought him with the largest colonizer in the world as he built his own business empire. Gilbert’s original design wrapped a skin of Perpendicular Gothic ornamental encrustation over a steel frame.[10] Likewise, Woolworth wanted his new headquarters to manifest ethical business practices, and by choosing Gothic, there was an immediate connection to Christian values.[11] Woolworth compared his buildings to “the awe-inspiring cathedrals of the Middle Ages.”[12] He also endeavored to have his building embody integrity: only elite clients of the highest degree were worthy of renting in his new building.[13]

Gothic Influences on the West Street and Woolworth Buildings
Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, while an original approach to Gothic architecture, was highly influenced by many Northern European Gothic precedents. Gilbert himself stated: “The Palace of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, the Hôtel de Ville at Rouen, the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris, the Town Hall at Middelburg, Hôtel de Ville, Compiègne,” along with “the towers of Reims, Antwerp, and Malines, and many others all contributed their quota of precedent and suggestion in the development of the detail” of the Woolworth Building.[14] The Palace of Jacques Coeur had stalls for selling wares around a central courtyard. The Woolworth Building also has stores (including the New York staple: Starbucks) facing the street and further stores face the internal stairwell, and many other public amenities reside within the building itself. From the Town Hall of Middelburg (see slideshow at bottom of page), Gilbert directly lifted flamboyant Gothic detailing that he used in the crown of the Woolworth building and the spandrels between the floors. It is further possible that Gilbert drew inspiration for the corner tourelles from this building. The composition of the West Street and Woolworth Buildings was likely highly inspired by the Hôtel de Ville at Compiègne and the Town Hall at Oudenaarde (see bottom of page), as was the transition between the lower building and tower making use of a transverse gable and mansard roof. Likewise, flattened Gothic arches around square windows is a feature that appears prominently at both the West Street and Woolworth buildings.

Reims Cathedral could have inspired the now-lost open tracery of the corner tourelles and the transparency Gilbert aimed for in designing the Woolworth Building. Antwerp Cathedral’s towering presence is achieved through its use of setbacks to create a tapering outline that Gilbert sought to mimic in the Woolworth Building. Had it been completed, Malines Cathedral (See bottom of page) would have likely tapered to a point like the tower at Antwerp. There, the eye is drawn upward by the thick, strong-looking buttressing that creates deep vertical shadows that cause the horizontal features to disappear. Gilbert himself said of the Cathedral: it is “remarkable for the effect of its rise or uplift —a sort of grand fliyng upward” with “many deep buttresses, giving vigorous vertical lines.”[15] Gilbert presumably ventured to echo the “vibe” of Malines Cathedral’s verticality (that incidentally aligned with Sullivanian ideals) in his design for the Woolworth Building.

Also very influential was the first building whence Woolworth asked Gilbert to seek inspiration: The Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster in London. Massing and setback of top storey. The strong vertical lines of the Woolworth Building are direct quotations from the Victoria Tower, and likewise are the horizontal string courses, employed to avoid a fluted column phenomenon in the shaft. The Woolworth Building’s corner tourelles are similar to those on the Victoria Tower, and the inset windows of the Victoria Tower could have influenced Gilbert’s play of shadow with canopies of the windows near the crown. Influence from the riverfront façade of the Palace can be seen on the rear of the Woolworth Building, where there are perpendicular Gothic tower-like finials atop each wing.

[1] Lisa Reilly, “Design and Study of the Past” in Skyscraper Gothic: Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings, ed. Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 31.
[2] Gail Fenske, “Medievalism, Mysticism and Modernity,” in Skyscraper Gothic: Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings, ed. Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 69.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Robert G. Calkins, “Secular Architecture in the Middle Ages” in Medieval Architecture in Western Europe from A.D. 300 to 1500 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 300.
[5] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 106-107, 110. and Calkins, “Secular Architecture in the Middle Ages,” 301.
[6] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 114, 117.
[7] Fenske, Medievalism, 66.
[8] Ibid., 71-72.
[9] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 123.
[10] Ibid., 129.
[11] Reilly, Design, 29.
[12] Fenske, Medievalism, 75.
[13] ibid., 76.
[14] Gilbert, Cass, quoted by Fenske in Medievalism, 71.
[15] Fenske, Medievalism, 67.
American Gothic
West Street Building
The precedent for the Woolworth Building was the West Street Building in Lower Manhattan. There, Gilbert executed a highly decorative Gothic skyscraper. Originally, he designed it with a five-storey central tower, such that it looked like one of the municipal buildings of the low countries.[1] Some of his designs were Romanesque revival, others were Gothic. Ultimately, the verticality of Gothic fit the brief for a skyscraper better than Romanesque. Vertical terracotta mullions draw the eye upward to the highly detailed flamboyant Gothic crown. In this way, Gilbert combined the lessons of skyscraper design from Louis Sullivan (from his Bayard-Condict Building in New York) and his Beaux-Arts background, blending functionality and ornament.[2] It is thought that Gilbert connected the design of this new commercial money-making structure to the client’s Flemish and Dutch ancestry.

F.W. Woolworth Company
Businessman-architect relationship
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.[3] 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.[4] 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.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]

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.[8] 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.[9] 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.”[10]

The Woolworth Building
Cass Gilbert’s design rises from the sidewalk of Broadway 792 feet above street level. The façade is articulated by vertical mullions, and the vertical divisions of the building are designated by horizontal Gothic canopies. The tower’s vertical mullions are thicker and run from the street all the way to the corner tourelles and add a sense of stability to the tower as anchor of the building. Gilbert avoids monotony in the shaft by alternating the style of the spandrels as well as by dividing it into groups of five floors, with the fifth floor in each group having arched spandrels topped with a string course. This shows that Gilbert was acutely aware of the aesthetic challenges of designing tall buildings. Furthermore, the transition between building and tower is articulated using a mansard roof and a transverse gable, visually connecting the tower with the building, something that the Singer Building lacked. Gilbert obviously wanted to make a signature statement on the skyline, not only as the tallest building in the city, but also as one of the most attractive. Towards the crown, the decoration increases in scale and ornament, as this was the most defining feature of the building from a distance. Unfortunately, the crown of the building is no longer in its original state, as the ornamental tourelles have been replaced with postmodern-looking simplified flattened versions, presumably to save money on repairs.[11]

The Meaning of Gothic
The neo-Gothic style had been in use throughout the United States and the UK in the mid to late 19th Century, usually in domestic, ecclesiastic or educational buildings. By the early 20th Century, it had begun to be used in commercial and public buildings as well which brought to them a sense of monumentality. When used in commercial buildings, the Gothic style could invoke allusions to the commerce and trade of the Middle Ages in the Low Countries and thereby the Protestant work ethic. French architectural historian and architect Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc praised the Gothic style for its structural rationalism and authenticity: there are no secrets to the structure of a Gothic building. In the use of Gothic in skyscrapers, architects wanted to invoke “intense spirituality, craftsmanship and social harmony” (perhaps incorrectly) associated with the Middle Ages.[12] The Gothic style was particularly well-suited to the task of ornamenting tall buildings as it accentuated the verticality of the buildings. In Gilbert’s West Street Building, the addition of the Gothic crown added to the verticality of the Sullivan-esque shaft.[13] Some even argued for the implementation of Gothic to “usher in a period of faith like that which Europe underwent in the Middle Ages,” but these zealots were an exception.[14]

—To Gilbert
Gilbert, like most architects, wanted to express meaning in his buildings through his designs. When commissioned to design a new building for the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington, DC, Gilbert chose a classical style to evoke the democracies of ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Likewise, for the West Street and Woolworth buildings, he chose to refer to Medieval Gothic architecture and its connotations with commerce. In the Middle Ages, trade and craft guilds started to manifest their commercial prowess by building imposing buildings in prominent locations in cities such as Bruges and Florence.[15] Fenske argues that in his design for the West Street Building, Gilbert was directly referencing the free-trading cities of the Low Countries and their magnificent gothic municipal buildings. By drawing his building with boats in front, Gilbert referred to New York’s origins as a mercantile city, in turn relating New York to the great medieval merchant cities of the low countries and relates the West Street Building to the cities’ municipal buildings. By extension, the West Street Building, like its medieval counterparts, symbolized democratic independence and the wealth associated with trade. Architecturally, Gilbert’s first plan payed direct homage to its predecessors in that it had a central tower; he aimed to connect his building to towered structures of Flemish medieval cities and aimed to effuse desirable urban qualities like “municipal dignity” grandeur and prosperity.[16] Critics lauded Gilbert’s gothic design, and he himself asserted that the West Street Building was the latest word on the subject of the treatment of tall buildings.[17] This can be extended to his use of Gothic in the Woolworth Building, because Woolworth approached him due to his exposure to the West Street Building.

Furthermore, there is some possibility that Gilbert may have had a personal preference to the Gothic style, as evidenced by the fact that the first building he ever designed was rendered in a Gothic-inspired fashion: his mother’s house in St. Paul, Minnesota. Trained in the Beaux-Arts manner, he paid great attention to the compositions of his buildings, both from nearby and afar. Accordingly, at the West Street and Woolworth buildings, Gilbert may have used his many sketches from his travels through Europe to decide what to emulate.[18] Its skeletal structure evident, and Gothic elements being seemingly integral led one critic to believe that Gilbert intuitively understood the Gothic style, and instead of creating a neo-Gothic building, had unknowingly created an authentic Gothic structure in the form of the Woolworth Building.[19]

—To Woolworth
The Gothic style was also important to Woolworth. His house on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was designed in the style, as most mansions in the area constructed after Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s copied its Gothic embellishment. Furthermore, after a buying trip to Europe where he saw many architectural landmarks along the way, Woolworth returned to New York and saw the efficacy of the West Street Building and wanted to model it in his own new headquarters on the corner of Park Place and Broadway. He first proposed to Gilbert that he wanted his new building to be gothic in style and based off the Victoria Tower from the Palace of Westminster in London.[20] Woolworth may have liked the associations it would have brought him with the largest colonizer in the world as he built his own business empire. Gilbert’s original design wrapped a skin of perpendicular gothic ornamental encrustation over a steel frame.[21] Likewise, Woolworth wanted his new headquarters to manifest ethical business practices, and by choosing Gothic, there was an immediate connection to Christian values.[22] Woolworth compared his buildings to “the awe-inspiring cathedrals of the Middle Ages.”[23] He also endeavored to have his building embody integrity: only elite clients of the highest degree were worthy of renting in his new building.[24]

Influences and Purpose of Gothic:
Gilbert’s Woolworth Building, while an original approach to Gothic architecture, was highly influenced by many Northern European Gothic precedents. Gilbert himself stated: “The Palace of Jacques Coeur at Bourges, the Hôtel de Ville at Rouen, the Hôtel de Cluny in Paris, the Town Hall at Middelburg, Hôtel de Ville, Compiègne,” along with “the towers of Reims, Antwerp, and Malines, and many others all contributed their quota of precedent and suggestion in the development of the detail” of the Woolworth Building.[25] The Palace of Jacques Coeur had stalls for selling wares around a central courtyard. The Woolworth Building also has stores (including the New York staple: Starbucks) facing the street and further stalls face the internal stairwell and many other public amenities reside within the building itself. From the Town Hall of Middelburg, Gilbert directly lifted flamboyant Gothic detailing that he used in the crown of the Woolworth building and spandrels between the floors. It is further possible that Gilbert drew inspiration for the corner tourelles from this building. The composition of the West Street and Woolworth Buildings was likely highly inspired by the Hôtel de Ville at Compiègne and the Town Hall at Oudenaarde, as was the transition between the lower building and tower making use of a transverse gable and mansard roof. Likewise, flattened Gothic arches around square windows is a feature that appears prominently at both the West Street and Woolworth buildings.

Reims Cathedral could have inspired the now-lost open tracery of the corner tourelles and the transparency Gilbert aimed for in designing the Woolworth Building. Antwerp Cathedral’s towering presence is achieved through its use of setbacks to create a tapering outline that Gilbert sought to mimic in the Woolworth Building. Had it been completed, Malines Cathedral would have likely tapered to a point like the tower at Antwerp. There, the eye is drawn upward by the thick, strong-looking buttressing that creates deep vertical shadows that cause the horizontal features to disappear. Gilbert himself said of the Cathedral: it is “remarkable for the effect of its rise or uplift —a sort of grand fliyng upward” with “many deep buttresses, giving vigorous vertical lines.”[26] Gilbert presumably ventured to echo the “vibe” of Malines Cathedral’s verticality (that incidentally aligned with Sullivanian ideals) in his design for the Woolworth Building.

Also very influential was the first building whence Woolworth asked Gilbert to seek inspiration: The Victoria Tower of the Palace of Westminster in London. Massing and setback of top storey. The strong vertical lines of the Woolworth Building are direct quotations from the Victoria Tower, and likewise are the horizontal string courses, employed to avoid a fluted column phenomenon in the shaft. The Woolworth Building’s corner tourelles are similar to those on the Victoria Tower, and the inset windows of the Victoria Tower could have influenced Gilbert’s play of shadow with canopies of the windows near the crown. Influence from the riverfront façade of the Palace can be seen on the rear of the Woolworth Building, where there are perpendicular Gothic tower-like finials atop each wing.

Gilbert's Traditionalism and his Creation of an American Style
While the United States and the rest of the Western World were obsessing over art deco, in 1926, Gilbert designed a more traditional conservative building for the New York Life Insurance Company. He recycled certain ornamentation from the Woolworth project and used the Gothic style this time it in a more English way: a heavy squat stone building in comparison to the soaring, weightless-yet-grounded Flamboyant French and Low Country style used in the Woolworth Building. Gilbert himself referred to the style of the building, a mix of Renaissance, Gothic and Art Deco as “American Perpendicular.”[27]

Cass Gilbert and Frank Woolworth sought to create a new style for a new type of building: the iconic representation of corporate America. To legitimize capitalist society, the Woolworth Building harks back to the grand municipal buildings of the Low Countries. Even as it was understood by contemporary people, the Woolworth Building’s association with ecclesiastical architecture as the Cathedral of Commerce were not a demerit. Gilbert as architect and Woolworth as patron worked to blend disparate Northern European late-Gothic elements into a harmonious whole; much like the United States was a blend of the cultures of Northern Europe, the two men aimed to reflect that notion in their choice of Northern European Gothic influences when designing the Woolworth Building. He was always trying to relate the style of the building to the needs of the client.[28] He had a conservative but not static approach to design, and was able to adapt according to demands of function and market considerations.[29] Gilbert managed to create a new Gothic style that he continued to morph as times changed and clients demanded more modern designs that were still rooted in the past. Cass Gilbert’s versatility and the authenticity of his Gothic work lead me to believe that he was actively seeking a truly American style – the “American Gothic.”

[1] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 106.
[2] Ibid., 94.
[3] Ibid., 13.
[4] Ibid., 18-19.
[5] Ibid., 20-21.
[6] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 27, 29.
[7] Ibid., 32-34.
[8] Ibid., 68.
[9] Ibid., 68
[10] Gilbert, Cass, quoted in Fenske, The Skyscraper, 68.
[11] Postal, Matthew A., ed., Guide to New York City Landmarks (4th ed.), New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009, 25. much of the terracotta cladding was removed between 1977 and 1981 and was replaced with concrete.
[12] Lisa Reilly, “Design and Study of the Past” in Skyscraper Gothic: Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings, ed. Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 31.
[13] Gail Fenske, “Medievalism, Mysticism and Modernity,” in Skyscraper Gothic: Medieval Style and Modernist Buildings, ed. Kevin D. Murphy and Lisa Reilly (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2017), 69.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Robert G. Calkins, “Secular Architecture in the Middle Ages” in Medieval Architecture in Western Europe from A.D. 300 to 1500 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 300.
[16] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 106-107, 110. and Calkins, “Secular Architecture in the Middle Ages,” 301.
[17] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 114, 117.
[18] Fenske, Medievalism, 66.
[19] Ibid., 71-72.
[20] Fenske, The Skyscraper, 123.
[21] Ibid., 129.
[22] Reilly, Design, 29.
[23] Fenske, Medievalism, 75.
[24] ibid., 76.
[25] Gilbert, Cass, quoted by Fenske in Medievalism, 71.
[26] Fenske, Medievalism, 67.
[27] Irish, Cass Gilbert, 153.
[28] e.g. the choice of monumental heavy Beaux-Arts style for the US Custom House reflected the clients’ desire to emphasize the importance and wealth of the Port of New York, and the choice of Classical architecture in the Supreme Court Building in DC to represent the inheritance of the democratic process from Ancient Greece and Rome.
[29] Irish, Cass Gilbert, 58-59.