Cass Gilbert spent much of his early life and began his architectural career in his adopted hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota. Part of the first generation of professionally trained architects in the area, he played a major role in introducing East Coast architectural sophistication and in shaping the development of architecture and the architectural profession. Gilbert practiced architecture in St. Paul for twenty-seven years, from 1883 to 1910. His voluminous personal and business letters and papers from this period reveal his wit and sense of humor, his entrepreneurial and public relations skills, and his pride and faith in his own abilities and accomplishments. He was an astute businessman and prolific designer and writer whose works and papers today are scattered far afield, confounding and enticing present-day researchers. Even after setting his sights on bigger and more prestigious projects in Boston and New York, opening a New York office, and eventually closing his St. Paul practice, Gilbert retained a strong interest in architectural developments in Minnesota. This chapter focuses on Gilbert's nonresidential work during the years he lived and worked in Minnesota; Gilbert's residential work in Minnesota is discussed in chapter 2.ⁱ

Cass Gilbert (Figure 1-1) was born in 1859 to a well-established family in Zanesville, an agricultural and industrial center located in the rolling hills of southeastern Ohio.ⁱⁱ He and his family lived first in downtown Zanesville. The brick home where Cass Gilbert was born stood on North Fourth Street near where the Muskingum County Courthouse stands today. The house was demolished in 1952.ⁱⁱⁱ Within a few years of Gilbert's birth, the family moved to a farm on Frazeysburg Road on the outskirts of town.

Cass Gilbert's father, Samuel Augustus Gilbert (1825–1868), was a topographical engineer for the U.S. Coast Survey and was assigned to projects along the East Coast, in Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere. He worked for the government of Colombia on surveying the route of what would become the Panama Canal. He also was a businessman who owned a foundry within a few blocks of the family home in downtown Zanesville. Later, he served in the Civil War.^iv Gilbert's grandfather, Charles Champion Gilbert (1797–1844), was a Connecticut native and Yale graduate who settled in Zanesville, established a law practice, and served as one of the town's first mayors. Cass Gilbert was named after his father's uncle, Lewis Cass (1782–1866), who had been a secretary of state, territorial governor of Michigan, senator, and a Democratic presidential candidate in 1848. Cass Gilbert's grandmother, Eleanor Warden Wheeler, remained in Zanesville until her death on June 5, 1885. She was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania on May 12, 1809 and probably played some role in Gilbert's being selected as the architect for a house for a local judge there in the early 1880s.

In 1868, when Gilbert was eight, his family moved to the thriving frontier town of St. Paul, the capital of the new state of Minnesota and well known as the head of steamboat navigation on the Mississippi River. It would soon become a railroading center while neighboring Minneapolis became known for manufacturing and flour milling. An article of 1888 in The Northwest Magazine described Minnesota's "excellent climate":

Comfortable winter weather in St. Paul is from zero to ten below at daybreak, rising to zero or ten above during the day. The air is clear and wonderfully invigorating and the sun shines brightly. The people you meet are in good spirits; every body moves quickly; business goes on with a vim. You are surprised at the amount of work you can do in a day without fatigue. . . . Every time you go out into the pure, cold atmosphere you are braced up anew. It is like the invigoration of champagne without the penalty of subsequent lassitude.^v

Within one year Gilbert's father died of consumption.^vi After his death Gilbert's mother, Elizabeth Wheeler Gilbert (1832–97), was able to live comfortably in St. Paul. She owned property in St. Paul and in Zanesville. During the last ten years of her life she spent winters with one of her other sons in California. She died at the age of 65 in 1897 at the residence of Cass Gilbert in St Paul.^vii

Cass Gilbert attended public school in St. Paul. He later attended a private Presbyterian boy's school in Minneapolis that became affiliated with what is now known as Macalester College in St. Paul.^viii During the summer of 1876 Gilbert began his architectural career by working as an assistant to a builder/carpenter in Red Wing, Minnesota. Rather than complete his last year of high school, he began a two-year apprenticeship to a long-established, self-taught, Twin Cities architect, Abraham Radcliffe (1827–86).^ix One of Radcliffe's best-known extant buildings is the Dakota County Courthouse in Hastings, Minnesota (1869–70). Radcliffe also designed many large Victorian homes in St. Paul. In this office, Gilbert became well acquainted with the local architectural community and came to the eventual decision that he needed to go elsewhere if he wished to obtain the best architectural education possible. Gilbert also became an avid reader of America's first architectural periodical, the American Architect and Building News (AABN), which began publication in 1876.^x

After spending the summer working as a surveyor for the Hudson and River Falls Railroad in Wisconsin, in the fall of 1878 Gilbert entered the architecture school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The school was then under the direction of the country's preeminent architectural educator, William Robert Ware (1832–1915). Another of Gilbert's professors was Eugene Létang (died 1892), an Ecole des Beaux-Arts graduate who taught using the Ecole's methods and who also did freelance work for Henry Hobson Richardson (1838–86). While at MIT Gilbert greatly enjoyed the company of his fellow students and spent much time traveling and sketching buildings around the Boston area. He was particularly intrigued with the work of Richardson. He also studied the works of contemporary British architects such as William Burgess (1827–81), George Edmond Street (1824–81), and Richard Norman Shaw (1831–1912). Gilbert's official transcript from his year at MIT indicates his performance was less than stellar: Architectural Design—95, A; History—70, C; Ornament—65, P; and Perspective—0, F.^xi It is unclear why Gilbert left MIT after only one year of the two-year program.

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