Gilbert, Cass

SUBJECT AREA: Architecture and building

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b. 24 November 1859 Zanesville, Ohio, USA

d. 17 May 1934 Brockenhurst, Hampshire, England

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American architect who designed a variety of high-quality, large-scale public buildings in eclectic mode.

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Gilbert travelled widely in Europe before returning to the USA to join the well-known firm of McKim, Mead \& White, for whom he designed the Minnesota State Capitol at Saint Paul (1896–1903). This building, like the majority of Gilbert's work, was in classical form, the great dome modelled on that of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. Other designs, on similar classical themes, included his large US Customs House in New York (1907). The structure for which Gilbert is best known, however, was an adaptation of French Gothic style to a sixty-storeyed skyscraper. This was the Woolworth Building, an office tower of romantic silhouette in downtown New York (1913). In contra-distinction to the high-rise designs of Louis Sullivan, who broke new ground in relating the design of the building to the verticality of the structure, Gilbert continued the skyscraper pattern of earlier years by clothing the steel structure in eclectic manner unrelated to the form beneath. The result, if backward-looking, is an elegant, attractive and familiar part of the New York skyline.

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Further Reading

W.H.Jordy, 1976, American Buildings and their Architects, Vol. 3, Garden City, New York: Anchor.

W.Weisman, 1970, The Rise of American Architecture, New York: Praeger.

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