This page was created by George White.
About the Architect
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.
