Cass Gilbert
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Cass Gilbert (November 29, 1859 - May 17, 1934) was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the middle of three sons, and was named after the statesman Lewis Cass, to whom he was distantly related. His father was a surveyor for the United States Coast Survey who moved his family to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was raised by his mother after his father died. At age 17, he began his architectural career by joining the Abraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul after dropping out of Macalester College, then enrolling at the MIT.
He later worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before starting a practice in St. Paul with James Knox Taylor. He won a series of house and office-building commissions (the Endicott Building in St. Paul is still regarded as a gem, and many of his noteworthy houses still stand on St. Paul's Grand Avenue) in Minnesota before landing a career-breaking commission designing the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House in New York City (now home to the George Gustav Heye Center). His public buildings in the Beaux Arts style reflect the optimistic American sense that the nation was the heir of Greek democracy, Roman law and Renaissance humanism.
Gilbert is considered 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: Alfred Stieglitz immortalized the Woolworth Building in a famous series of photographs and John Marin created several paintings of the Woolworth Building, and 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 other skyscrapers in New York City and Cincinnati, college campuses at Oberlin College and the University of Texas, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the towers of the George Washington Bridge, various railroad stations (including the New Haven Union Station), and the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.. His high reputation plunged 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, and when you look at his body of works as whole, it is much more eclectic than many critics admit.
Notable works
- The Broadway/Chambers Building
- 90 West Street, New York City, 1907. Severely damaged in the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
- Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, facing Bowling Green, New York .
- Brooklyn Army Terminal, Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, NY, 1918.
- The Detroit Public Library, main branch, 1921.
- The James Scott Memorial Fountain, Belle Isle, Detroit, MI, 1925.
- Tower plans for cladding the George Washington Bridge, New York City, in masonry, 1926. Not carried out
- Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul, 1895–1905, in High Renaissance style, was not a mere 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 Saint Peter's over a range of buildings expressing the bicameral legislature, was so nobly handsome that West Virginia and Arkansas contracted for Gilbert capitols too. Its brick dome is held in hoops of steel.
- New York Life Insurance Building, 1926.
- Fountain in Ridgefield, Connecticut, at the intersection of Rtes 35 and 33. This fountain was given to the town by Cass Gilbert, who lived in town for a period. In 2004, a man test driving a Hummer ran into the fountain and completely destroyed it. An exact replica has since been completed.
- Saint Louis Art Museum, known as the Palace of the Fine Arts, built for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. The Art Museum was the only major building of the fair built as a permanent structure.
- Central Library, St. Louis (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 [link].
- A series of master plans for the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, 1907.
- United States Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C., 1932 - 1935, Gilbert's last major project, guided to completion by his son, Cass Gilbert Jr. He died a year before it was completed. A vast Roman temple in the Corinthian order is penetrated by a cross range articulated with pilasters in very low relief. The central tablet in the richly sculpted frieze reads EQUAL 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 in at the state capitol in Charleston. The pediment sculptures Liberty attended by order and Authority (great lawgivers Moses, Confucius, and Solon are on the West Portico) were executed by Herman A. MacNeil.
- West Virginia State Capitol, Charleston, West Virginia, 1924-1932.
- Woolworth Building, New York City, 1913. A Gothic skyscraper clad in glazed terracotta panels, it was the tallest building in the world when built. Bas reliefs in the lobby depict Woolworth and Gilbert, Woolworth holding nickels and dimes.
- St. Paul Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota. Cretin Hall, Loras Hall, the Service Center, a classroom building, the refectory building, the administration building in 1894, and Grace Hall in 1913 were commissioned by James J. Hill. Only Cretin, Loras, the Service Center, and Grace still stand.
External links
- [Web page about ] (archINFORM database)
- Architectural tour of the [US Supreme Court Building]
- [New York Architecture Images-Cass Gilbert]
- [Cass Gilbert Collection, 1897-1936] Archives Center, National Museum of American History
- [History of the Buildings at the University of St. Thomas]
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