Cass Gilbert cladding a steel frame became the model for decades. Modernists embraced his work: John Marin painted it several times; even Frank Lloyd Wright praised the lines of the building, though he decried the ornamentation. Gilbert was one of the first celebrity architects in America, designing skyscrapers in New York City and Cincinnati, campus buildings at Oberlin College and the University of Texas at Austin, state capitols in Minnesota and West Virginia, the support towers of the George Washington Bridge, railroad stations (including the New Haven Union Station, 1920), and the United States Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C.. His reputation
Cass Gilbert has since rebounded because of "respect for the integrity and classic beauty of his masterworks". Gilbert was born in Zanesville, Ohio, the middle of three sons, and was named after the statesman Lewis Cass, to whom he was distantly related. Gilbert's father General Samuel A. Gilbert was a Union veteran of the American Civil War and a surveyor for the United States Coast Survey. His uncle was Union Gen. Charles Champion Gilbert. When he was nine, Gilbert's family moved to St. Paul, Minnesota, where he was raised by his mother after his father died. He attended preparatory school but dropped