Cass Gilbert Collection

Cass Gilbert, a renowned figure in American architecture, served as Oberlin College's general architect from 1912 until his death on 17 May 1934. Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio, on January 28 1859 to Samuel Augustus (1825-1868) and Elizabeth Fulton Wheeler Gilbert (1832-1897). He had four brothers - Warden Wheeler (1855-1885), Charles Silliman (1834-1934), Wyllys (1862-1863), and Samuel Augustus II (1866-1936). Gilbert grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he worked as a carpenter's helper and draftsman.  He pursued a year of study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1878-79, and then spent the year 1880 in Europe. Next, Gilbert worked as a draftsman in the New York City architectural firm of McKim, Mead and White for two years and subsequently developed his own independent practice in St. Paul, Minn., in late 1882.  Gilbert's architecture, which employed classical, Romanesque, and Gothic styles as well as eclectic designs and embellishments, is best represented by the Woolworth Building in New York City (1911-1913), a sixty-six story skyscraper that remained the tallest building in the world until 1930.

Gilbert's vision for the buildings of Oberlin College reflected "decorous poise... drawn from inspirations in the European past" for a campus defined by "quiet harmony and ordered beauty." Incorporating alumnus Charles Martin Hall's 1914 bequest that Tappan Square be cleared of buildings and maintained as an open space, Gilbert's subsequent campus planning for Oberlin College called for a "highly rectilinear plan, with long sight lines across the empty square and through Memorial Arch, enclosed on the block west of the square by a dense cluster of buildings connected by curving arcades." Gilbert's contributions to the Oberlin College campus include Bosworth Hall and the Graduate School of Theology, also known as the Quadrangle (built 1931); Finney Chapel (1908); the Dudley Peter Allen Memorial Art Building (1917); Allen Memorial Hospital (1925); and the Cox Administration Building (1915). Gilbert also executed numerous studies for campus building plans. Although commissioned by Oberlin in 1903 to design Finney Chapel, Gilbert received no substantial compensation from the institution until he was appointed general architect for the College in 1912 by College President Henry Churchill King (1858-1934) (an influential Gilbert supporter) and the Board of Trustees.

Gilbert married Julia Tappan Martyn Finch (1862-1952), and together they had four children, all born in St. Paul, Minnesota: Emily Finch (1888-1962), Elizabeth Wheeler (1890-1904), Julia Swift (1892-1934), and Cass II (1894-1975).