Gilbert was a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the establishedsocial 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 theNational Mall in Washington, D.C., which he disliked.[6]
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."[7] 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".[8]
Gilbert was born inZanesville, Ohio, the middle of three sons, and was named after the statesmanLewis Cass, to whom he was distantly related.[3] Gilbert's father General Samuel A. Gilbert was aUnion veteran of theAmerican Civil War and a surveyor for theUnited States Coast Survey. His uncle was Union GeneralCharles Champion Gilbert.[9][10] When he was nine, Gilbert's family moved toSt. Paul, Minnesota, where he was raised by his mother after his father died. Cass was raised Presbyterian.[11] He attended preparatory school but dropped out ofMacalester College. He began his architectural career at age 17 by joining theAbraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul. In 1878, Gilbert enrolled in the architecture program atMIT.[12]
Cass Gilbert standing in front of thedrum atop the Minnesota State Capitol before its dome was placed
Gilbert worked for a time with the firm ofMcKim, Mead & White before starting a practice in St. Paul withJames Knox Taylor. He was commissioned to design a number of railroad stations, including those inAnoka,Willmar and the extantLittle Falls depot, all in Minnesota.[3] As a Minnesota architect he was best known for his design of theMinnesota State Capitol and the downtown St. PaulEndicott Building.[13] 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'sSummit Avenue), several churches featuring rich textures and colors, resort summer homes, and warehouses.[13]
Gilbert'sWoolworth Building in New York City was the world's tallest building when completed in 1913.
Gilbert was a skyscraper pioneer; when designing theWoolworth 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 legendaryDaniel Burnham — and his technique of cladding a steel frame became the model for decades.[3] Modernists embraced his work: artistJohn Marin painted it several times; evenFrank 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 andCincinnati, campus buildings atOberlin College and theUniversity of Texas at Austin, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of theGeorge Washington Bridge, railroad stations (including theNew Haven Union Station, 1920),[17] and theUnited States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C. His reputation declined among some professionals during the age ofModernism, but he was on the design committee that guided and eventually approved the modernist design of Manhattan's groundbreakingRockefeller 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."[18]
Gilbert's two buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus,Sutton Hall (1918) andBattle Hall (1911), are recognized by architectural historians as among the finest works of architecture in the state.[citation needed] 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.
Cretin Hall, Loras Hall, a gymnasium (later the Service Center), a classroom building, the refectory building, and the administration building in 1894 were commissioned byJames J. Hill. Cretin and the Service Center no longer stand as of 2024, on theUniversity of St. Thomas (Minnesota) campus, as they were torn down to build a hockey/basketball arena.
Designed inHigh Renaissancestyle, the building is not a replica of theUnited States Capitol. Local newspapers made a fuss when Gilbert sent toGeorgia formarble, but the result, in which a hemisphericaldome caps a high drum not unlike that ofSt. Peter's Basilica, crowning a building housing the bicameral legislature and the state supreme court, was so nobly handsome thatWest Virginia andArkansas contracted for Gilbert capitols as well. Its brick dome is held in hoops of steel.[citation needed]
Commissioned byF. 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.
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.
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-downtriumphal 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 theLaurentian Library.[27][28]
This fountain, at the intersection of Routes 35 and 33, was designed and donated to the town by Cass Gilbert, who had a summer home (Keeler Tavern) within sight of the intersection. In 2004, adrunk driver crashed into the fountain, heavily damaging it; the fountain was rebuilt, raised higher, and surrounded by protective plantings, and it is still functioning today.[29]
Gilbert designed four buildings at Oberlin: Finney Chapel (1909), the Cox Administration Building (1915), theAllen Memorial Art Museum, and Bosworth Hall (1931). He enjoyed a close working relationship with Oberlin's presidentHenry Churchill King, but his relationship with Oberlin deteriorated after King retired in 1927 and most of the design work and construction supervision of Bosworth Hall and its residential quadrangle was done by Gilbert's son Cass Jr., who had earlier supervised the construction of the Allen Memorial Hospital (1924) in Oberlin (nowMercy Allen Medical Center).
This building was designed as the headquarters of theChase Company and forms part of theWaterbury Municipal Center Complex, a unique concentration of Gilbert's architecture comprising the Waterbury City Hall, the Chase Bank Building and the Chase company headquarters, Chase's house, adispensary and Lincoln House, a headquarters building for the city's charities.
Gilbert's last major project, guided to completion by his son, Cass Gilbert Jr. He died a year before it was completed. A vastRoman temple in theCorinthian order is penetrated by a cross range articulated with pilasters in very low relief. The central tablet in the richly sculpted frieze readsEQUAL 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 inCharleston. The pediment sculptures Liberty attended by order and Authority (great lawgiversMoses,Confucius, andSolon are on the West Portico) were executed byHermon Atkins MacNeil.
Cass Gilbert is often confused with another prominent New York architect of the time,Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert, in part becauseFrank W. Woolworth engaged both; Cass Gilbert designed the famous Woolworth Building skyscraper on Broadway, while C. P. H. Gilbert designed Woolworth's personal mansion.
TheUkrainian Institute building on Manhattan's 5th Avenue, the work of C. P. H. Gilbert, is often incorrectly attributed to Cass Gilbert.[32][33]
Cass Gilbert is sometimes also confused with his son, architect Cass Gilbert Jr.
^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.
^abPotter, Janet Greenstein (1996).Great American Railroad Stations. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. pp. 70, 380.ISBN978-0471143895.
^Letter toRalph 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
^"Broadway-Chambers Building".New York Architecture Images. Archived from the original on August 29, 2004. RetrievedJanuary 26, 2007.
^"Cass Gilbert Plan".University of Minnesota Sesquicentennial History. June 1, 2000. Archived fromthe original on January 8, 2007. RetrievedJanuary 26, 2007.
Christen, Barbara S. and Flanders, Steven (editors).Cass Gilbert, Life and Work: Architect of the Public Domain New York: W.W. Norton, 2001.
Moutschen, Joseph.Architecture américaine – Une interview de l'architecte qui a construit la plus haute maison du monde (Cass Gilbert); in L'Equerre: Janvier 1930 p. 177; Février 1930 p. 187; Mars 1930, p. 196; L'Equerre, 1928–1939; Edition Foure-Tout, 2010, pp. 1350;ISBN978-2-930525-12-9
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