EVENT: Cass Gilbert Talk at U.S. Custom House, Feb. 15th
The U.S. General Services Administration, in partnership with the
Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
Proudly Presents
Cass Gilbert as Interloper
A discussion by Sharon Irish, Cass Gilbert Scholar
at the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Custom House
One Bowling Green in Lower Manhattan
Thursday, February 15, 2007
6:30 pm – 7:30 pm
Free to Public
For questions, please email [email protected] or call (212) 264-3305
Cass Gilbert as Interloper
When in 1899 architect Cass Gilbert’s design won the competition to build the U.S. Custom House in New York City, he excitedly wrote to his wife in Minnesota that “our ship has come in.” Gilbert, viewed as a Midwestern interloper in New York City design circles as well as by local and state politicians, was not welcomed when he boldly moved his practice to New York. During the lengthy design and construction phases of the Custom House, Gilbert strengthened his ties to talented designers, powerful contractors, and skilled engineers, many of whom continued to help his office thrive through building skyscrapers in the city. With the renovation of the Custom House in the 1990s for use by the National Museum of the American Indian, “interloper” and “ships coming in” have gained resonance, as we look again at this Beaux-Arts building at the end of the Wiechquaekeck Trail, one of the Algonquian trade routes.
Dr. Sharon Irish is an architectural historian at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of Cass Gilbert, Architect: Modern Traditionalist (Monacelli Press, 1999), as well as several articles and chapters on Gilbert’s New York buildings and architectural practice. More recently she has been researching the racialization of space, and has just completed a book manuscript on the California-based performance artist Suzanne Lacy.