Cass Gilbert Gilbert was a conservative who believed architecture should reflect historic traditions and the established social order. His design of the new Supreme Court building (1935), with its classical lines and small size, contrasted sharply with the large federal buildings going up along the National Mall in Washington, D.C., which he disliked. Heilbrun says "Gilbert's pioneering buildings injected vitality into skyscraper design, and his 'Gothic skyscraper,' epitomized by the Woolworth Building, profoundly influenced architects during the first decades of the twentieth century." Christen and Flanders note that his reputation among architectural critics went into eclipse during the age of modernism, but
James A. Farley Building post office. In 1913, the act was repealed partially in light of a scandal in which Taylor had picked his former Minnesota partner Cass Gilbert to design the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House. The building prominently bears the inscription: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds," which is frequently mistaken as the official motto of the United States Postal Service. It was actually supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the Farley Building and the original