Gilbert

"Who designed the Woolworth Building?" is often asked in vain, for an architect, though eminent, does not come often enough before the public to be remembered. Cass Gilbert designed the Woolworth Building. Last week he came once more before the public by being elected President of the National Academy of Design to succeed Edwin Howland Blashfield, aged painter of murals, who refused reelection.

Born in Zanesville, Ohio, in 1859, educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cass Gilbert designed the Capitols of Minnesota, West Virginia, Arkansas, the customs house in Manhattan, the public libraries in St. Louis and Detroit, the state universities of Minnesota and Texas. Poring over a draftboard has made him near-sighted ; he wears a pince-nez. He dresses dapperly; has a manner at once alert and suave. All his work, like his face, possesses a balanced, grave handsomeness: it meets all demands with that superb adequacy which is the aptest test of architecture, an art in which inspiration must yield to practicability. An architect who was always inspired would be a failure. On one of those great occasions when Cass Gilbert was inspired, he saw a tower lift, in his mind, its pale indomitable pinnacle so beautifully that generations must inquire: "Who designed the Woolworth Building?"