Cass Gilbert collection

Cass Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio on November 24, 1859. He moved with his family to St. Paul in 1868 and attended Macalester College when it was a prep school and then the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1880, he joined the prestigious New York firm of McKim, Mead & White, leaving there in 1882 to return to St. Paul as their western representative. He began a partnership with James Knox Taylor in 1885, whom he had known at school in St. Paul and at MIT.

James Knox Taylor was born in Knoxville, Illinois in 1857. He was educated in the public schools of St. Paul and studied at MIT (1877-1879). He then worked in New York City before joining Gilbert in partnership in 1885. In 1892, he moved to Philadelphia and two years later went to work in the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury in Washington, DC as a draftsman. He was appointed Supervising Architect in 1898 and remained in that position until 1912. Taylor spent two years as director of the department of architecture at MIT and then moved to Yonkers, NY, where he practiced for several years before retiring to Tampa, FL in 1928. He died there on August 27, 1929.

The Gilbert and Taylor partnership (1885-1891) was highly successful, producing many residences and other buildings in St. Paul and elsewhere. Among these were the Northern Pacific Depot (Little Falls, MN) (1889); Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church (St. Paul) (1885-1886); the Board of Trade Building (Duluth, MN) (1885); and the Endicott Building (St. Paul) (1889-1890).

When the partnership dissolved in 1891, Gilbert continued to maintain a private practice in St. Paul until moving to New York City around 1901. The most outstanding commission during those years was the Minnesota State Capitol, St. Paul (1895-1905). He had a very distinguished career in New York, designing such buildings as the Palace of Fine Arts at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (St. Louis) (1903-1904); the University of Minnesota campus plan (1906); the Woolworth Building (1911-1913); the Detroit Public Library (1913-1921); the Federal Reserve Bank (Minneapolis) (1923-1925); the West Virginia State Capitol (Wheeling) (1924-1932); the U.S. Supreme Court Building (1928-1935); the New York Life Insurance Co. building (New York) (1929); and many others. Cass Gilbert died on May 17, 1934.