Cass Gilbert & the Beaux Arts Tradition
The Early Years of Cass Gilbert
Cass Gilbert (1859 – 1934) was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the son of Elizabeth Fulton Wheeler and General Samuel A. Gilbert. His father served most of his life in the U.S. Coast Survey, and during the Civil War was made Brigadier General of the Army of the Cumberland. In 1868, Gilbert and his family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota.
Gilbert was educated in the public schools of Zanesville and St. Paul. He received his professional education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and finished the one year course in 1879, receiving prizes from the Boston Society of Architects and the MIT prize for that year. He served one season alongside his father with the U.S. Coast Survey, doing topological work on the Highlands of the Hudson, and railway construction and engineering in Wisconsin. In 1880, he went to Europe to explore and sketch many of the historic buildings overseas.
He returned to New York and joined the architectural firm of McKim, Mead, and White, assisting the respected Stanford White. In an era of few professional schools, most architects trained in the apprentice system. The firm of McKim, Mead and White, among the most prestigious in the nation, served as a veritable launching ground for other major architects. After gaining much experience, Gilbert took charge of the Baltimore office, then returned home to St. Paul, Minnesota in 1883 to open a McKim, Mead, and White office there.
In 1887, Gilbert set up practice in St. Paul, Minnesota with James Knox Taylor, who later became Supervising Architect of the Treasury, a position he held during the time of the competition and building of the Custom House. The partnership lasted until 1892, when Taylor parted amicably from the firm and went east to work. Gilbert was elected President of the Minnesota Chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 1892.
Cass Gilbert’s Career Highlights
He received national recognition after winning the commission for the Minnesota State Capitol (1895 – 1905). In the Minnesota years, Gilbert was also busy building in Boston, New York, and elsewhere throughout the country. After moving his office to New York City, Gilbert designed such notable buildings as New York’s Broadway-Chambers Building (1899 – 1900), West Street Building (1905 – 1907), the Woolworth Building (1910 - 1913), and Brooklyn Army Terminal (1918 – 1919).
Called one of the pioneers of the skyscraper, Gilbert is best known in his field for his 792-foot Woolworth Building, the world’s highest building for a time after 1913. It was hailed for the visual excitement of its soaring shafts and delicate white terra cotta ornament. Technically, he was influential in evolving the tripartite formula for tall buildings; the trend toward verticality, the tower motif, and for the set-back form adopted after 1916 in response to New York City’s zoning law. Gilbert essentially preserved the eclectic inheritance of McKim, Mead and White, with its strong emphasis on historical styles, and combined the challenges of modern technology and evolving aesthetic sensibility to his projects.
Gilbert’s career was long and filled with prodigious works. He produced town plans for New Haven and designed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building, the U.S. Supreme Court, the West Virginia State Capitol, and the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Court House in New York. He built major libraries in St. Louis, Detroit, and New Haven, and the Academy of Arts Building on West 156th Street in New York. He also provided the general plans for the Universities of Minnesota and Texas, as well as serving as consulting architect for the Port of New York on the Bayonne Bridge, connecting Staten Island to New Jersey.
Gilbert’s architectural style was essentially eclectic. He selected the historic style most appropriate to the project, using technical, architectural elements combined with a personal style. He did not specialize in one style but instead used a French-inspired Classicism for the State Capitol at St. Paul; Romanesque for the Finney Chapel at Oberlin; Italian Renaissance Revival for the Industrial Arts School in Trenton; Beaux-Arts for the Custom House; Gothic Revival for the Woolworth Building; Roman Classical Revival for the U.S. Supreme Court; Colonial Revival for his buildings in Waterbury; and a muscular Modernism for the Army Supply Base in Brooklyn. The latter structure won critical acclaim for its severe utilitarianism combined with elegance of line and mass.
The Beaux Arts Style
The U.S. Custom House at One Bowling Green was executed in the Beaux Arts style, relying heavily on accurate symmetry and elaborate ornamentation, resembling the older Baroque and Rococo styles. An important aspect of the Beaux-Arts style was its interest in ornament and mass, integrating sculpture within the structure. Gilbert, perhaps because of an early interest in painting was especially concerned with the quality of the art and decoration which played a significant role in his building. At the Custom House, he personally supervised the work of the sculptors, modelers, and craftsmen. This design reflects the planning and aesthetic ideals of the city’s movement, which promoted civic patriotism, urban economics and beauty. The Beaux Arts style utilizes Greco and Roman columns, figure sculpture (Daniel Chester French), pilasters, cartouches (Karl Bitter), arches, grand staircases and entrances (Guastavino), etc. All of these architectural elements are present in the U.S. Custom House.
Other examples of Beaux Arts buildings and their architects in New York City include: Flatiron Building (Daniel Burnham), Metropolitan Museum of Art (Richard Morris Hunt), New York Public Library (Carrere and Hastings), and Grand Central Terminal (Reed and Stern & Warren and Wetmore).
