Cass Gilbert
Cass Gilbert (b. Zanesville, Ohio)
Cass Gilbert began his architectural career at age 17 by joining the Abraham M. Radcliffe office in St. Paul, MI. In 1878 Gilbert attended the architecture program at MIT.
He worked for a time with the firm of McKim, Mead, and White before starting his own practice in St. Paul with James Knox Tayor. In Minnesota, Gilbert was best known for his design of the state capitol dome and the downtown St. Paul Endicott Building as well as private residences, churches, warehouses, and railroad depots.
In 1898, Gilbert permanently moved his base to New York with the commission of the design of the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. Gilbert, who designed the Woolworth Building in NYC, is considered a skyscraper pioneer whose technique of cladding a steel frame became the model for decades. Among his notable designs are the campus buildings at Oberlin College and the University of Texas, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge, the Saint Louis Art Museum, and the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.