Cass Gilbert

From Free net encyclopedia

Image:Woolworth bldg nov2005d.jpg Image:Rear st louis art musem.jpg Image:Minnesota State Capitol.jpg Image:Us supreme court.jpg 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. At age 17, he began his architectural career by joining the Abraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul, then enrolled at the MIT.

He later worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before starting his own practice. 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, but the cladding of his buildings looked back to Neoclassicism rather than embracing modernity. His high reputation plunged among professionals during the age of Modernism, but ordinary people have always been uplifted by the reassuring sense of continuity that his rich and sober but slightly bland designs offer.

[edit]

Notable works

90 West Street, New York City, 1907.

Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House, New York City.

Brooklyn Army Terminal, Sunset Park area of Brooklyn, NY, 1918.

The Detroit Public Library, main branch, 1921.

The James Scott Memorial Fountain on Belle Isle, Detroit, MI, 1925.

Plans for cladding the George Washington Bridge, New York City, in classicizing 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, which is 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. A new fountain in the exact same style has since been completed.

Saint Louis Art Museum, known as the Palace of the Fine Arts, 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 [1].

A series of master plans for the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota, 1907. Project was deemed "excessive" and "impractical" [2].

United States Supreme Court building, Washington, D.C., 1932 - 1935, Gilbert's last major project. 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, WV, 1924-1932.

Woolworth Building, New York City, 1913. A Gothic skyscraper clad in terracotta panels and the tallest building in the world when built. Gargoyles depicting Woolworth and Gilbert, among others, are visible above the main entrance on Broadway.

Cretin Hall, Loras Hall, the Service Center, a classroom building, the refectory building, the administration building in 1894, and Grace Hall in 1913 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. The buildings were originally part of the St. Paul Seminary but were acquired by St. Thomas in the 1980s for undergraduate residences. Only Cretin, Loras, the Service Center, and Grace still stand today.

Gilbert's drawings and correspondence are preserved at the New-York Historical Society.

[edit]