the beaux-arts architect's compromise: the reconciliation of city beautiful planning and the...

7/31/2019 The Beaux-Arts Architect's Compromise: The Reconciliation of City Beautiful Planning and the Commercial Skyscra

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The Beaux-Arts

Architects CompromiseThe Reconciliation of City Beautiful Planningand the Commercial Skyscraper

Jonathan Hopkins, Graduate Student

5/16/2012

ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERISTY

SCHOOL OF ART, ARCHITECTURE AND HISTORIC

PRESERVATION

ARCH 577: THE SKYSCRAPER SPRING 2012

Course Instructor: Dr. Gail Fenske

Professor of History, Theory & Criticism of Architecture

Keywords: Skyscraper; City Beautiful Movement; Cass Gilbert; Beaux-Arts

architects; New Haven city planning

______________________________________________________________________

Recommended Citation

Hopkins, Jonathan G. The Beaux-Arts Architects Compromise: The Reconciliation of

City Beautiful Planning and the Commercial Skyscraperhttp://www.Scribd.com/(May 16,

2012
http://www.scribd.com/http://www.scribd.com/http://www.scribd.com/http://www.scribd.com/


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Jonathan Hopkins The Beaux-Arts Architects Compromise Page 1

Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Introduction 3

Select Works of Cass Gilbert 4

Diverging Ideologies and the 1910 Plan of New Haven 6

Conclusions 11

Figures 16

Sources Cited 33

Abstract


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Using Cass Gilberts work around the turn of the 20th Century as a vehicle for

exploration, this paper discusses the conflict that exists between the planning ideals of the City

Beautiful Movement, as embodied in the Report of the New Haven Civic ImprovementCommission, and the design of skyscrapers by Beaux-Arts architects. As a nationally renowned

architect, Gilbert embodies the work of other Beaux-Arts architects of the era and is therefore

able to serve as a profound case study in the matter. Gilberts own conflicts and contradictions

speak to a more general dilemma that many City Beautiful planners faced when commissioned

to design skyscrapers. Ultimately, Cass Gilbert is able to reconcile this dilemma as seen in his

design for what is perhaps one of the most important American buildings of the 20th Century.

Introduction


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By 1910, when the Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commission a

landmark City Beautiful plan for the Connecticut city produced by nationally renowned architect

Cass Gilbert and landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. was published, the impact of

50 years of rapid industrial and commercial development was perceived as both an opportunity

and a problem in need of reform.1 The great centering of industrial wealth that had occurred incities across the country since the end of the Civil War provided the financial opportunity for

public improvement projects while the associated commercial development of this period

simultaneously created the conditions that required a response. However, the reforms offered in

response by the City Beautiful Movement contained several conflicts, some of which prevented

many plans from being implemented and some of which highlight the contrast between Beaux

Arts architects theories on urban design and much of their actual built work. The factors that

inhibited the implementation of City Beautiful Plans include public opposition or disinterest, and

a lack of government willingness and ability to support and enact the plans. As Geoffrey

Blodgett, a former Robert S. Danforth Professor of History at Oberlin College whose dissertation

focused on political reform efforts of the late 19

th

Century, explains between the Civil War andthe New Deal, the administration in Washington was Republican 75 percent of the time, with

comparably lopsided statistics for control of the Congress and of the state governments outside

the South. The Republican party [at this time] was the party of [] government-sponsored

economic growth.2 In New Haven the same year that the Gilbert and Olmsted Report was

published, republican Mayor Frank Rice assumed office. According to Doug Rae, current Ely

Professor of Management and Political Science at Yale University, Rices mayoralty was based

on the promise that his city hall would be a business-oriented regime, with modest goals and

an organizational focus that nobody could mistake for populism.3 Public opposition of City

Beautiful plans, which called for highly ornamented and monumental government buildings, was

rooted in public skepticism of government. This skepticism was based on the competing

interests of a working class general public and increasingly wealthy private business.4 While theCity Beautiful Movement was interested in addressing government corruption through reform

1The report expressed concernbut its tone was above all optimistic. New Haven was a great city,

growing greater by the day. It would need new avenues aping Haussmanns Paris, new parks onOlmsteds standard in New York, new and far better rail facilities, public constructions modeled after thoseof Washington, Budapest, and Baltimore.Douglas W. Rae Industrial ConvergenceCity: Urbanism and Its End (Yale University Press, 2003) p. 692

Geoffrey Blodgett. The Politics of Public ArchitectureCass Gilbert: Life and Work, Architecture of thePublic Domain (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001) p. 633

Rae. City p. 1844Doug Rae explains that the democratization of city politics had taken a decisive turn in 1845, near the

beginning of serious capitalist development, when the property requirement for voting was repealed. Twodistinct versions of urban community were thereby set in perpetual competition with one another. One,the older and less democratic, defined the political community by material stakeholding by property-ownership, by business investment by the commitment of fixed economic assets to the place and to itstax rolls. The other defined the community by reference to residencethe commitment of ones person,and her family, to the city constituted the defining act of membership. These two conceptions have beenin tension since long before 1845, but it was not until then that their rivalry became a palpable fact ofroutine politics. On the first idea, the citys interest and that of its property ho lders are more or less thesame; on the second, the citys interest and those of all its residents are more or less the same. Rae. City pp. 185-186


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efforts5, the lavish Beaux Arts designs of many government buildings did not necessarily

communicate those efforts to the public. In addition to lacking public confidence6 and financial

support from City Hall7, the City Beautiful Movements plans often called forlarge public

improvement projects that were out of reach for many municipal governments coffers. These

projects included reworking the railroad infrastructure, giving city government control of theharbor [] limiting building heights [] widening major street rights-of-way[and] eliminating rear

tenement housing8 all requests that required government acquisition or regulation of private

property9, power which didnt exist and wasnt desired formunicipal governments in the early

20th Century.10 For instance, the type of political conditions that allowed Baron Haussmann to

radically alter the City of Paris in the mid-19th Century under Napoleon III and achieve the urban

form that the City Beautiful Movement sought to also achieve did not exist in the United

States.11 Other conflicts include ones that highlight the contrast between proposals for uniform

private urban building fabric absent of commercial skyscrapers in City Beautiful documents and

the phenomenon of Beaux Arts architects designing tall buildings in the same cities for which

the City Beautiful plans were produced. Cass Gilbert, who was both a Beaux Arts architect thatworked on several planning documents and designed tall buildings, will serve as the primary

vehicle for exploring these contradictions and ultimately determining how they were reconciled.

Select Works of Cass Gilbert

As one of the greatest American architects of the 20th Century, Cass Gilbert received

many important commissions, which continue to be exemplars of quality design and civic spirit

today. Gilberts life and early professional career began in the Midwestern United States. Some

of his early works, like the Clark Bryant Block built from 1886-87 in St. Paul, Minnesota (Fig.1),

were typical commercial structures of modest size and materials. However, by 1896 Gilbert

5[The City Practical Movement] thus fell within the more general arguments of the Progressive

movement, ascendant during this era, which sought to reform city governments of the late nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries through greater municipal self-control.Mark Fenster. A Remedy on Paper: The Role of Law in the Failure of City Planning in New Haven, 1907-1913The Yale Law Journal Vol. 107, No. 4 (January, 1998) p. 11046

Erik Vogt. The City Redeemed: New Havens Civic Improvement Plan of 1910Yale in New Haven:Architecture & Urbanism (Yale University Press, 2004) p. 2377The committee solicited a contribution of $5,000 from the city, which denied the request.

Vogt. Yale in New Haven p. 3798

Rae. City p. 2069

Zoning wasnt implemented in New Haven until 1926. 10Scholars trying to account for the failure of city planning in New Haven during the period prior to

zoning have typically pointed to either a lack of political and public support or the effectiveness of landuse coordination under the existing common law and prevailing social norms.Fenster. Yale Law Journal p. 109511

In 1851, [Napoleon Bonapartes] nephew assumed power, proclaiming himself Napoleon III, andcommissioned Baron Haussmann to begin the well-known and perhaps infamous town-planning programto modernize Paris, which resulted in the destruction of many buildings of real historic import. George Sinclair. IntroductionHistoric Maps and Views of Paris (Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers,2009)


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received his first important East Coast project12, Bostons Brazer Building (Fig. 2), which he

designed from his St. Paul office. The 11-story commercial office building is located at 25-29

State Street adjacent to the Old State House - in the heart of Bostons old colonial center.

Gilberts high-rise design was the tallest building he [had] designed [and] was one of the

earliest steel-framed buildings in Boston.13During the planning for the Brazer Building, theCass Gilbert Societys description of the building states, there was a concern that the City of

Boston was preparing to limit the allowable height of buildings, which, if it had passed, would

have affected Gilberts design significantly since the small site [meant] Gilbert did not have the

luxury to do much more with his design than maximize the square footage on each floor.14 The

Broadway Chambers Building (Fig.3) located at 277 Broadway in New York City was completed

in 1900 and was, like the Brazer Building, designed from Gilberts St. Paul office.15 Also like the

Boston project, there were new zoning laws being proposed for the City of New York at the time

of the Broadway Chambers commission, which would have limited building heights on new

construction. However, the original design16 was eventually built as the zoning laws did not

pass. The 18-story building is derived from Classical architecture [and exemplifies] thearrangement of the columnbase, shaft, and capital.17The buildings granite, red brick and

terracotta faade fronts City Hall Park - New Yorks historic center and civic square.

Between 1910 and 1913, Gilbert would receive numerous commissions, several of which

were for tall buildings throughout the country. Completed in 1911, the Spalding Building (Fig. 4)

is a 103,824 square foot18, 12-story office building located in Portland, Oregon, which was a

growing industrial city of about 207,000 residents in 1910. Newark, New Jersey, another

growing industrial city with a population of 350,000 in 1910, saw the completion of the First

National State Bank Building (Fig. 5), a 12-story commercial high-rise with ground floor bank, in

1912. From 1910-1913 Gilbert worked on what is perhaps his most famous work, the Woolworth

Building (Fig. 6), which is a 60-story Gothic style skyscraper located next to the BroadwayChambers Building and also facing New Yorks City Hall Park. Union Central Life Insurance Co.

Building (Fig. 7) is a 495-foot tall [building that] is one of the major skyscrapers designed by

Gilbert19 and it contains, according to Barbara Christen, a distinguished architectural historian,

powerful symbolic architectural language that conveyed the strength and stability of the

12Brazer BuildingCass Gilbert Society websitehttp://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/boston-brazer/

(accessed May 9, 2012)13

Ibid.14

Ibid.15

Broadway Chambers BuildingCass Gilbert Society websitehttp://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/(accessed May 9, 2012)16

Gilbert completed the original design in 1897, a full two years before finding an interested developer tobuild the project.17

Broadway Chambers BuildingCass Gilbert Society website18

Multnomah County Assessor. Portland Maps websitehttp://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606 (accessed May 9, 2012)19

Union Central Life Insurance Co. BuildingCass Gilbert Society websitehttp://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/union-central-life-bldg/ (accessed May 9, 2012)
http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/boston-brazer/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/boston-brazer/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/boston-brazer/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/union-central-life-bldg/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/union-central-life-bldg/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/union-central-life-bldg/http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://portlandmaps.com/detail.cfm?action=Assessor&propertyid=R246075&state_id=1N1E34CD%20%207800&address_id=101163&intersection_id=&dynamic_point=0&x=7644681.12&y=683138.941&place=319%20SW%20WASHINGTON%20ST&city=PORTLAND&neighborhood=DOWNTOWN&seg_id=138606http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/nyc-broadway-chambers/http://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/works/boston-brazer/


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insurance industry in the early twentieth century20 in the growing industrial powerhouse of

Cincinnati, Ohio, which boasted a population of 360,000 in 1910.

The four buildings described above, which were all completed within 3 years of each

other, represent the rise of Cass Gilberts career as a prominent 20th

Century architect and all ofthe examples above display his abilities as a tall building designer. However, individual building

commissions were only part of his career. Barbara Christen, when reflecting on his career,

states that Cass Gilbert was a planner as much as he was an architect [and] himself thought

his talents and contributions as a planner equaled those as an architect.21 Gilbert was also an

advocate for cities22 and their reformation, as can be seen on his work in Washington, D.C., his

campus designs for the University of Minnesota and University of Texas, and the city plan for

New Haven.

Diverging Ideologies and the 1910 Plan of New Haven

By the time Gilbert was commissioned to work on the Report of the New Haven CivicImprovement Commissionin 1907, he had already completed several tall buildings including

Bostons Brazer building and New Yorks Broadway Chambers building. The report also

overlapped with several other tall building designs like the Woolworth building on City Hall Park

and the Spalding building in downtown Portland. This was a pivotal point in Gilberts career

where he was rising to prominence, receiving important commissions and refining his skills. The

contents of the New Haven Report, which showcase Gilberts planning theories, present a stark

contrast with many of his commissioned works of the same time period. The diverging

ideologies apparent in the conflicts between Gilberts planning and individual building designs

highlight the Beaux Arts architects dilemma in the early 20th Century.23Of the Present

Conditions and Tendencies, Kinds of Improvements Needed, and 93 Specific

Recommendations and Suggestions outlined in the Report, six of these illustrate the modern

20Barbara S. Christen. Patronage, Politics and Civic Identity: The Development of Cincinnatis Union

Central Life Insurance Company BuildingOhio Valley History Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 2009) p. 7221

Barbara S. Christen. The Architect As Planner: Cass Gilberts Responses to Historic Open SpaceInventing the Skyline: The Architecture of Cass Gilbert (Columbia University Press, 2000) p. 17722

He viewed the historical buildings of Europe as touchstones for his designs and the American city as apotential city beautiful, which might rival Paris, London, or Rome in its order, dignity and monumentality. Gail Fenske. The Beaux-Arts Architect and the Skyscraper: Cass Gilbert, the Professional Engineer, andthe Rationalization of Construction in Chicago and New YorkThe American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories(Cambridge University Press, 2005) p. 1923

The skyscraper presented a special set of problems for Gilbert and his American Beaux-Arts

contemporaries. The forces of modernization that it represented among them new methods of financing,efficiency of office planning and engineering, and rapid construction seemed totally at odds with theBeaux-Arts architects perception that buildings should be timeless and ennobling works of art. Ascompositions, such works of art were to have a monumental and dignified presence in the public spacesof American cities. To that end, Beaux-Arts architects emphasized formal principles such as organizing aplan around clearly defined axes of circulation and the expression in elevation of a clear hierarchy ofvolumes. The skyscraper, typified by a thinness of metal construction, a standardization of buildingcomponents, and hence a visual uniformity, seemed to most Beaux-Arts architects tenaciouslyirreconcilable with such time-honored formal principles.Fenske. The American Skyscraper pp. 19-20


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Beaux Arts architects dilemma well.24 They are the Reports population projections, colonial

character preservation initiative, call for the establishment of a formal Civic Center, traffic

decongestion recommendation, outline for shaping a cohesive, efficient and beautiful urban

fabric, and encouragement of public ownership of facilities and utilities.

According to the Report, the matter of first importance is the population [with] the

probable doubling of the present population of New Haven in about the next twenty-five years,

and a population of some 400,000 by the year 1950.25 The report even goes as far as to say it

is more likely than not that the end of the twentieth century will find New Haven Green the

center of a metropolitan population of about a million and a half, substantially the situation of

Boston Common to-day.26 In putting these population projections into historical context,

Douglas Rae explains that,

The authors were apparently supposing that there is something about cities at the given

size level (e.g., about 100,000) which would let you predict their future growth regardless

of historical timing. They were willing to ignore the date at which this level was reached,as if some trans-historical mechanism were at work in 1841, 1881, and 1910, and would

continue to determine rates of urban expansion for 1930, 1950, and on into the indefinite

future

Rae continues,

The error, easy to spot with the advantage of hindsight, is that the authors carried their

extrapolation across a great historical divide. They were living near the end of a great

centering era, and reasoned as if capitalist development would, somehow, continue to

promote change in unchanging ways drawing people and investment inexorably into

now-aging city centers. What they overlooked was the coincidental and temporary phase

of technological development, which explained a period of rapid centering development inthe same years hardly a repeatable or cyclic event appears to have altogether

escaped attention in setting assumptions about growth in the 1910 study.27

As Raes analysis reveals, the Reports authors Cass Gilbert and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.

had misconceptions about the nature of urban growth patterns in historical context (Fig. 8),

which led them to perceive New Haven at various times in the future (1925, 1950, 2000) as

essentially the same as present day (1910) Portland, Cincinnati or Boston. As the authors of the

Report explain,

The citizens of New Haven are familiar with the fact that the city is growing rather rapidlyand that it is changing character as it grows; but many of them fail to realize how rapid

and how profound these changes are likely to be in the near future. [New Haven] has []been growing at a steadily increasing rate [and] many of those now living will see the

24Cass Gilbert and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. ContentsReport of the New Haven Civic Improvement

Commission (New Haven Civic Improvement Committee; The Tuttle Morehouse & Taylor Company, NewHaven; Dec. 1910) pgs. 13,19,4725

Gilbert, et al. Report pp. 13-1426

Gilbert, et al. Report p. 1427

Rae. City pp. 71-72


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completion of the process by which it is being transformed from the pleasant little NewEngland college town of the middle nineteenth century [] into a widespread urbanmetropolis of the twentieth century[Just] as surely as the earlier stages of this development force the installation of a jointwater supply, a joint sewer system and a constantly increasing outlay for improving the

streets upon which the urban travel is concentrated, so surely also will the conditions of adense and widespread population force the joint provision of other facilities which theexperience of large cities has proven to be necessary for the well-being of their people.For these reasons it is important not only to consider what is needed for the properperformance of the functions now imposed upon the streets and parks and the wholephysical equipment of the municipality, but also in great measure to forecast theinevitable demands of the future greater city.In order to estimate what the future character of the city will probably be, it is needful toconsider its past and compare it with cities that have gone through a similar history andalready reached their greater development.

28

Therefore, one can conclude that the types of development that are appropriate in those cities

that have reached their greater development should also be appropriate in a city that isinevitably on its way to becoming a large metropolis.

Preserving the Colonial proportions and history of the New Haven Green, which Gilbert

felt was threatened29, were primary concerns of his when crafting suggestions for the Report.30

With an interest in Colonial architecture and history31and in preferring the formal languages of

the past32, Gilbert sought to utilize the historic core of the community for maximum effect while

also respecting the traditions of past projects and ideas.33 Gilbert did so by designing his

buildings for the New Haven Green (Figs. 9 & 10) to be Georgian in style and designed to be in

harmony with the United Church, as well as other buildings in the historic core of the city.34 For

instance, his design of the New Haven Public Library (Fig. 11) sought to make the building

distinctive and monumental and at the same time to preserve the proportions and spirit of the

colonial architecture of New Haven.35Gilberts interest in New Havens character, in particular,

and colonial architecture, in general, are again displayed in his later design for the New Haven

Railroad Station (Fig. 12), which, according to architectural historian Elizabeth Mills Brown,

28Gilbert, et al. Report p. 13

29Thus did Cass Gilbert congratulate New Haveners on having inherited something as beautiful as the

original Green, and warn them about the old city having been encroached upon in recent years by socalled modern improvements and buildings [] erected regardless of the environment and withoutharmony of style.Rae. City pp. 80-8130

Gilbert thought New Haven was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and he was especiallygratified to design a building (the New Haven Public Library) that faced the green, where he could be sureof how it would be perceived across the open space. Christen. Inventing the Skyline p. 20631

Christen. Inventing the Skyline p. 18632

Robert A. M. Stern. IntroductionCass Gilbert: Life and Work, Architecture of the Public Domain (W. W.Norton & Company, Inc., 2001) p. 1533



Ibid.


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Ecole training: the reliance on architectural elements of a classical past, balance and symmetry

in architectural massing, a hierarchical arrangement of building in a grander scheme, clear

circulation patterns within and between buildings in a group, and lavish visual representation of

these ideas.45 The City Beautiful Movement was influenced by Baron Haussmann and

Napoleon IIIs modernization of Paris in the mid-18th Century, which called for the creation ofwide boulevards with a new sewer system (Fig. 13), and uniform private urban building fabric

that would highlight public spaces and civic buildings (Figs. 14 & 15). City Beautiful plans also

drew from examples of other cities as seen when the New Haven Reports authors state that,

in Boston, buildings are limited in the business district to 125 feet in height above the

sidewalk grade on the side of the principal entrance, in the rest of the city at large to 80

feet, and on the borders of most of the parks and parkways to 70 feet; with provisions for

roofs, steeples and other projections to rise above those heights upon approval of plans

by the proper authorities. In Washington, and in most European cities, the height

limitation is fixed in relation to street widths46

As seen in Gilberts initial sketches and final rendered drawings for New Havens center (Figs.

16, 17, 18 & 19), an effect like that of Paris was greatly desired.47 In the drawings, only steeples,

copulas and clock towers are visible in the skyline and only public open spaces are articulated

at street level, thereby differentiating civic and public functions from the uniform private urban

building fabric of commercial development.

The final suggestion from New Havens City Practical48 Report considered here that

highlights the Beaux-Arts architects, particularly Cass Gilberts, dilemma is one that concerns

importance, and that private enterprise will inevitably change the whole aspect of the property within thecommon interest of all citizens requires that the citys historic center should not be defaced[]By limiting the height of buildings, the city will not only present a certain desirable unit at the skyline andadd greatly to its beauty and dignity Gilbert, et al. Report pp. 51-5245

Christen. Inventing the Skyline pp. 188-18946


[Gilbert and Olmsted] advocate a central boulevard linking the rail station to the Green, modeled afterthoroughfares of the sort constructed by Baron Georges Haussmann in Paris a generation earlier.Rae. City p. 8348

Much as 1901 constituted a breakthrough year for the [City Beautiful Movement], 1909 markedanother turning point in its evolution, with the publication of Daniel Burnhams Plan of Chicago, the mostambitious attempt at city planning ever undertaken. Although universally admired for its breadth of visionand technical virtuosity, the plan also drew criticism for its perceived formal and stylistic rigidity. Thecritique fixed upon the widely held belief but generally mistaken view that the City Beautiful Movement

was more concerned with aesthetics than with the practical problems of urban life. Leaders in themovement sought to rectify this misperception when they organized their First National Conference onCity Planning in Washington, D.C., held the same year that the Plan of Chicagowas released. Theydistanced themselves from the City Beautiful label and emphasized the pragmatic benefits of their work.If I were disposed to delay interrupt, or confuse the progress of city development, Cass Gilbert himselfdeclared in a speech, I would publish the phrase city beautiful in big headlines in every newspaper. Letus have the city useful, the city practical, the city livable, the city sensible, the city anything but the citybeautiful. His remark reflected the true nature of the problem, which was one of semantics rather thansubstance. Although most of the City Beautiful plans produced before 1909 were directly concerned withutility and practicality, this fact was often overshadowed by the more accessible imagery accompanying


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public ownership of some of the citys built and natural resources. The Reports authors

advocate for rail investment, preservation of water reservoirs, and public control of harbor

development, which, in Douglas Raes opinion, would probably have been very wise.49 Along

with advocating for stronger private land use regulations and lavish public buildings, the

Reports suggestions about public ownership and management of the citys resources seem topresent a conflict in political ideology for Gilbert, who was a republican in his party politics.50

Conclusions

If the Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commissionis the embodiment of

Cass Gilberts views on proper city planning, then many of the suggestions in the Report

present a clear contrast with much of the architects built work around the time period, many of

which were tall buildings.51And if Gilberts work is representative of the Beaux-Arts architect of

the time, which as a national leader in design and planning he would be, then there is a clear

conflict between the views of City Beautiful planners and their commissioned work (Figs. 20, 21,

22).

If, as the Report suggested, New Haven should prepare for exponential population

growth that would lead the city to eventually becoming a metropolis of a million and a half by the

end of the 20th Century by looking to the development patterns of cities that are already large,

then surely the New Haven plan could learn from some of Gilberts own work in larger cities.

Interestingly though, Gilberts 12-story Spalding Building in Portland a city with a 1910

population of 207,000 or, in other words, New Havens projected population for 1925 would

have violated the height limitation being suggested in the New Haven Report. Same with

Gilberts First National State Bank Building also 12-stories located in Newark, which at the

time of the buildings construction had a population of about 350,000 people. And finally,

Cincinnatis 495-foot tall Union Central Life Insurance Co. Building doesnt come anywhereclose to meeting the New Haven Reports 100 foot maximum building height even though New

Havens future growth was predicted to surpass Cincinnatis1910 population of 360,000 in less

than 50 years. Clearly, population demands did not influence Gilbert to design tall buildings.

Boston, like New Haven, was a colonial capital that rapidly grew with the onset of

industrialism in the United States. Also like New Haven, Boston maintained some of its colonial

character into the industrial age. The Old State House in Boston (Fig. 23), for instance, was built

a full century before New Havens United Church, which Gilbert admired so much and drew

from in his design for the New Haven Public Library (Fig. 24). New Havens library design

their prodigious written reports (the Plan of Chicagobeing the most notable example of thisphenomenon).Vogt. Yale in New Haven p. 23749

Rae. City p. 8250

Blodgett. Cass Gilbert, Life and Work p. 6351

Boston [] has found it possible to restrict the height of buildings facing Copley Square to 90 feet, andthe wisdom thereof is apparent. Limitations of height are needed in all our cities, but they should be asflexible as is consistent with the thorough practical protection of the common interest in light and air. Gilbert, et al. Report pp. 51


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stands in stark contrast with Gilberts design for the 11-story Brazer Building, which sits next to

Bostons Old State House and violates the historic squares colonial scale (Figs. 25). A building

design that would have perhaps been more consistent with Gilberts views is the 13-story Union

Trust Company building (Figs. 26 & 27) that, coincidentally, is located in New Haven and faces

the Green. Built in 1927, the Union Trust Company building is Colonial Revivalism to the nthdegree.52In many ways, the Union Trust Company building is the embodiment of Gilberts

views on appropriate design within a colonial context like that of Bostons Old State House

square53, yet Gilberts own design of the Brazer Building is perhaps more akin to the type of so-

called modern improvements and buildings that Gilbert decried were popping up on the New

Haven Green at the same time of the Brazer Buildings design and construction. So while the

authors of the New Haven Report state that a public comfort station must be provided sooner

or later, but this may well be placed below the surface, as in Boston, the same doesnt apply

when it comes to skyscrapers.54

Gilbert not only saw New Havens Green as its historical center, but also as the

appropriate future center of its civic life. In securing this future, Gilbert advocated for acquiring

land around the Green for future public and civic building sites, in addition to proposing the

height limitation, which would have retained the colonial scale of the Green so as to prominently

display the civic buildings over commercial endeavors. However, his approach with New

Havens civic center, which Gilbert thought would become the center of a large metropolis, is

vastly different from his approach to New Yorks civic square, City Hall Park. Two tall buildings,

the Broadway Chambers Building and the Woolworth Building, which would have violated a

100-foot building height restriction, were designed by Gilbert to face New York Citys historic

center and civic square (Fig. 28).

Gilbert did not view the deployment of the skyscraper in cities as a means of

accommodating future growth. A full generation before the modern critiques of the skyscraper

by people like Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier, Cass Gilbert expressed his concerns with

the propensity for tall buildings to generate traffic congestion; the mitigation of which he saw as

an integral duty of municipal governments and city planners. In the early 20 th Century,

maintaining and improving infrastructure for the convenience of private investment was the

primary role for municipal government in New Haven.55 Similarly, City Beautiful plans attempted

to respond to the unplanned industrial growth of the 19th Century by ordering the cores of cities

52Brown. New Haven p. 114

53Allusions to the churches on the Green are applied to a commercial skyscraper, and the Federal

vocabulary is stretched upward through 13 stories. Nevertheless this is a building of urban gentility, andthe banking room today is one of the best remaining interiors of the Golden Twenties it is a handsomegesture on the banks part to maintain it so well. Cross and Cross intended their design as a tribute toNew Havens Federal Green, creating what they called a tower of pure Colonial design and otherrefinements of appropriateness.Ibid.54


In this era, City Hall was marginal to economic life [] it maintained infrastructure and improved itmodestlyRae. City p. 203


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around boulevards and public spaces. This approach was used in Haussmanns modernization

of Paris where he created wide boulevards linking open spaces that provided a framework of

valuable building lots to sold, for a profit, to developers. The apartment blocks and department

stores that lined the new boulevards were built to a height of around 7 stories - the maximum

capacity at a time before the practical elevator and construction technology existed to raisebuildings above the vertical walking distance of the population. However, by the turn of the 20 th

Century, advanced elevator technology was readily available and in use throughout the United

States, but the resulting urban form of Paris was preferred by the City Beautiful architects for

aesthetic and circulation reasons over the actual model that was used by Haussmann to

maximize development.

Lastly, Gilberts views on the importance of regulating private land-use and encouraging

public ownership and management of resources conflict with his Republican Party alignment,

which, at the time, favored the protection of individual property rights and exploitative private

enterprise. The authors of the Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commission

acknowledge this conflict by stating that, whatever views may be held by anyone upon the

subject of socialism in its controversial aspects, there is no escaping the fact that the normal

course of urban development through which New Haven is passing leads inevitably to an

increasing mutual dependence.56 It is precisely this kind of rationalization of conflicting

ideologies that embodies the Beaux-Arts architects conflict in this era. It is a conflict between

personal beliefs, which, in the case of the City Beautiful Movement, are informed by the best

practices of urban design from around the world and the combination of the reality of limited

public sector power and willingness in the United States in the early 20 th Century in addition to

the reality of practicing architecture, which is a commission-based profession. However, just as

Gilberts political views are reconciled by the reality of existing and future conditions, so too are

the commercial designs of City Beautiful architects reconciled, albeit through compromise.

Gilberts involvement in the Detroit City Beautiful Plan with his design for the citys Public

Library, perhaps best displays the movements need for compromise in order to achieve its

goals. Gilberts library design, described by University of Virginia School of Architecture

architectural history professor and scholar Daniel Bluestone, embodied a Renaissance

conception of artistic collaboration [and] the librarys community of artists provided something of

a model for ideals of civic unity and coalescence around the standard of elite culture.57

Furthermore, his design appealed to civic monumentality and achieved the ideal Beaux-Arts

form.58 However, in order to achieve this civic ideal, a compromise was made in the planning of

the civic center of which the library is a part. According to Bluestone , in grouping the library and

museum in the center, outside of the downtown, the architects of the civic landscape concededto commerce not only the skyline but also the central position in the city.59 Gilbert felt that civic

centers, in order to be most dignified and representative of modern culture should be in the

56Gilbert, et al. Report p. 13

57Daniel Bluestone. Detroits City Beautiful and the Problem of CommerceJournal of the Society of

Architectural Historians Vol. 17, No. 3 (September, 1988) p. 26058

Ibid.59

Bluestone. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians p. 262


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psychological center of the city. However, achieving that in Detroit would have required the

purchasing of expensive land and competing with existing tall buildings in the citys downtown.

By compromising with location, the ideal urban form, as understood by the City Beautiful

Movement, was achieved.

The Woolworth Company Building presents another type of compromise that is perhaps

the best example, in a single building, of a Beaux-Arts architects ability to reconcile the

competing goals of civic duty with the requirement of the commission. As architectural historic

Sharon Irish explains, despite being a private real-estate venture, the Woolworth Company

Building became a civic monument due to its height, its ornament, and its location.60 Adding to

these civic qualities, the building offered the public a large lobby with shops and restaurants

(Fig. 29) as well as elaborate decoration61 throughout the building, but especially in the public

areas like the bank (Fig. 30). Irish credits Gilberts talent for using architectural forms to

connect disparate activities and people in a diverse early 20thCentury United States and his

monumental public work coexisted easily with his commercial designs, in part because of their

large scale and the increasing similarities between the organization of business and

government62 with his success as a designer. Furthermore, Gilberts own views on reconciling

his civic mindedness with his skyscraper commissions, as pointed out by architectural historian

Gail Fenske, were positive, for he optimistically believed [] that in masterminding an

artistically designed as well as professionally engineered skyscraper, it was possible to have

[both] an architecture that evoked the character of a European capital as well as an architecture

that served the functional needs of the twentieth-century city.63 This is a sentiment that Gilbert

himself expressed. In looking back at his career, Gilbert reflected that the changing skyline of

New York is one of the marvels of a marvelous age [] skyscrapers were born of necessities of

time and space, under the urge of modern life, and they are expressive of its commercial

conditions and the enterprise of epoch.64

However, Gilbert does contradict his views on trafficcongestion, but compensates with a building that is decidedly civic in its ornament, form and

function. And while Gilbert included ground level public spaces and highly ornamented facades

on many of his tall buildings, none do so on the scale of the Woolworth. The Woolworth

Company Building is the culmination of Gilberts journey, which began with his less successful

early east coast projects that were designed from his St. Paul office, to reconcile his views on

planning with the requirements of the commission. Just as the fact that the normal course of

urban development required Gilbert to contradict his republican political views, the urge of

modern life [to express] commercial conditions and the enterprise of epoch provided the

rationalization for Gilbert to compromise, along with other Beaux-Arts architects, his planning

views as established in the Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commission.

60Sharon Irish. Balancing Act: Commercial Heights and Civic MonumentalityCass Gilbert, Architect:

Modern Traditionalist (The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1999) p. 13361

Irish. Cass Gilbert, Architect p. 13462

Irish. Cass Gilbert, Architect. P. 16263

Fenske. The American Skyscraper p. 2064

Quote reprinted in Fenske. Cass Gilbert, Life and Work p. 138


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As various City Beautiful plans show (Fig. 19, 31, 32, 33), if given a choice, the Beaux-

Arts architect would prefer to develop buildings that contribute to an urban fabric that is

proportional to street widths, organized around public spaces and civic buildings, and the

embodiment of beauty as well as functionality while reforming land use policy so as to increase

public control of growth and design of urban areas. However, since policy changes were a longand difficult battle and development in the early 20th Century was capitalist driven, architects

had to make do with the commissions that they were given. Architects reconciled this conflict by

developing an architectural language that applied civic qualities to commercial buildings. This

language included engaging ornament around the base of the building, the inclusion of interior

public spaces that were designed to feel accessible, and forms that promoted high civic

aspirations.65 And while this process came with compromises, they were a necessary part of

developing an architectural language that was imbedded in civic ideals and could also be

applied to the design of market-oriented commercial buildings.

65Even commercial buildings, and especially the newly evolved skyscrapers, were made to conform to

the enhanced sense of civic responsibility, not only soaring to new heights but also incorporatinginnumerable public services and sometimes even, as in the Woolworth Building, grand public spaces.Stern. Cass Gilbert: Life and Work p. 15


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Figures

Fig. 1 View of the Clark Bryant Block prior to 1980 demolition (Cass Gilbert Society)

Fig. 2 Drawing of the Brazer Building(Cass Gilbert Society)


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Fig. 3 Contemporary view of the Broadway Chambers Building(Larry Speck)

Fig. 4 Contemporary view of the Spalding Building(Henneberry Eddy Architects)


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Fig. 5 Contemporary view of the First National State Bank Building (John W. Cahill)

Fig. 6 Contemporary view of the Woolworth Building(Marjorie Pearson)


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Fig. 7 Contemporary view of the Union Central Life Insurance Co. Building (Jim Steinhart)

Fig. 8 New Haven population growth projection(Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement

Commission)


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Fig. 9 Gilberts preliminary design for Records, Courthouse, Bank and Hotel buildings on Church Street

facing the Green(Inventing the Skyline)

Fig. 10Gilberts preliminary design for a new Courthouse on Elm Street next to the library (Inventing theSkyline)

Fig. 11 Contemporary view of the New Haven Free Public Library(Nick Marucci)


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Fig. 12 Contemporary view of the New Haven Railroad Station(Nick Marucci)

Fig. 13 Section through a Paris Boulevard


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Fig.14 Building elevation and plans of typical apartment block in Paris

Fig. 15 Contemporary aerial view around Arc de Triomphe(Art History Archive)


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Fig. 16 Initial sketch of Gilberts design for the civic center(Inventing the Skyline)

Fig. 17 Initial sketches of Gilberts design for the train station approach (Inventing the Skyline)


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Fig. 18 Preliminary aerial view sketch of Gilberts design for the train station approach(Report of the New

Haven Civic Improvement Commission)

Fig. 19 Final rendered drawing of Gilberts design for New Havens center(Report of the New Haven Civic

Improvement Commission)


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Fig. 20 Contemporary view of the Flatiron Building,1902, New York by Daniel Burnham (Royce Douglas)

Fig. 21 Contemporary view of 26 Broadway by Carrere(John W. Cahill)


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Fig. 22 Contemporary view of Manhattan Municipal Building by McKim, Mead & White(NYC CitywideAdministrative Services)

Fig. 23 Painting of Bostons Old State House from 1801 by James Brown Martson (1st-Art-Gallery.com)


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Fig. 24 Contemporary view of the New Haven Green looking towardsGilberts library with United Church

on the left(Library of Congress)

Fig. 25 Contemporary view of Bostons Old State House;, Brazer Building to the far left(Tony Ang)


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Fig. 26 Postcard of the Union Trust Company building in New Haven (Tichnor Brothers Collection)

Fig. 27 Contemporary view of Downtown New Haven looking past United Church to the Union TrustCompany building


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Fig. 28 Historic view of the Woolworth Building(Cass Gilbert, Life and Work)

Fig. 29 Rendered perspective drawing of the Woolworths public lobby space (Inventing the Skyline)


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Fig. 30 Rendered perspective drawing of the Woolworths banking room (Inventing the Skyline)

Fig. 31 Aerial view of Chicago painted by Jules Guerin(Plan of Chicago)


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Fig. 32 Aerial view of the Cleveland Group plan of 1903 (D.H. Ellison)

Fig. 33 Aerial view of McMillan Plan(Cornell University Library)


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Sources Cited

Reports (Primary Sources)

Burnham, Daniel and Edward H. Bennett and Wilbert R. Hasbrouck. Plan of Chicago (Commercial Club ofChicago, 1909)

Burnham, Daniel and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., Charles F. McKim and Augustus Saint-Gaudens.McMillan Plan (Senate Park Improvement Commission of the District of Columbia, 1902)

Burnham, Daniel and John Carrere and Arnold Brunner. Cleveland Group Plan of 1903 (1903)

Gilbert, Cass and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. Report of the New Haven Civic Improvement Commission(New Haven Civic Improvement Committee; The Tuttle Morehouse & Taylor Company, New Haven; Dec.1910)

Bibliography (Scholarly Sources)

Brown, Elizabeth Mills. New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design (Yale University Press,1976)

Christen, Barbara S. and Steven Flanders, eds. Cass Gilbert: Life and Work, Architecture of the PublicDomain (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2001)

Heilbrun, Margaret, ed. Inventing the Skyline: The Architecture of Cass Gilbert (Columbia UniversityPress, 2000)

Irish, Sharon. Cass Gilbert, Architect: Modern Traditionalist (The Monacelli Press, Inc., 1999)

Moudry, Roberta, ed. The American Skyscraper: Cultural Histories (Cambridge University Press, 2005)

Rae, Douglas W. City: Urbanism and Its End (Yale University Press, 2003)

Scully, Vincent and Catherine Lynn, Erik Vogt and Paul Goldberger, eds. Yale in New Haven:Architecture & Urbanism (Yale University Press, 2004)

Sinclair, George. Historic Maps and Views of Paris (Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers, 2009)

Journal Articles (Scholarly Sources)

Bluestone, Daniel. Detroits City Beautiful and the Problem of Commerce Journal of the Society ofArchitectural Historians Vol. 17, No. 3 (September, 1988) pp. 245-262

Christen, Barbara S. Patronage, Politics and Civic Identity: The Development of Cincinnatis UnionCentral Life Insurance Company BuildingOhio Valley History Vol. 9, No. 2 (Summer 2009) pp.54-77

Fenster, Mark. A Remedy on Paper: The Role of Law in the Failure of City Planning in New Haven, 1907-1913The Yale Law Journal Vol. 107, No. 4 (January, 1998) pp. 1093-1123


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Online Resources (Reference Material)

1st-Art-Galery websitehttp://www.1st-art-gallery.com/ (accessed May 11, 2012)

Art History Archive websitehttp://www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/ (accessed May 11, 2012)

Cass Gilbert Society websitehttp://www.cassgilbertsociety.org/(accessed May 11, 2012)

Cornell University Library websitehttp://www.library.cornell.edu/ (accessed May 11, 2012)

D.H. Ellison websitehttp://www.dhellison.com/homepage_items/index(accessed May 11, 2012)

Emporis websitehttp://www.emporis.com/(accessed May 11, 2012)

Henneberry Eddy Architects websitehttp://www.henneberyeddy.com/(accessed May 11, 2012)

Larry Speck websitehttp://larryspeck.com/(accessed May 11, 2012)

Library of Congress websitehttp://www.loc.gov/index.html(accessed May 11, 2012)

NYC Citywide Administrative Serviceshttp://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/home/home.shtml (accessedMay 11, 2012)

Portland Maps websitehttp://www.portlandmaps.com/(accessed May 11, 2012)

Tichnor Brothers Collection website

http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/collections/72157624096090138/ (accessed May 11,2012)
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the beaux-arts architect's compromise: the reconciliation of city beautiful planning and the...

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