Cass Gilbert which now houses the George Gustav Heye Center. Gilbert served on the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts from 1910 to 1916. In 1906 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1908. Gilbert served as President of the Academy from 1926 to 1933. Gilbert was a skyscraper pioneer; when designing the Woolworth Building he moved into unproven ground — though he certainly was aware of the ground-breaking work done by Chicago architects on skyscrapers and once discussed merging firms with the legendary Daniel Burnham — and his technique of
Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology enable efficiencies of scale by building a massive, one million square-foot building incorporating the administrative, teaching, and research functions. The proposed five-story building resembled a large "E" with the base aligned to the river, with "cloistered" courtyards and a pedimented Doric exterior. Freeman also rejected using masonry walls, and proposed using reinforced concrete, a relatively new material that was then thought to be both expensive and unconventional. President Maclaurin and MIT's executive committee sought to hire an established architect, rather than an ambitious engineer, to design the campus and briefly retained Cass Gilbert before conflicts with a determined Freeman drove