Past Events & Meetings | Past Tours | Past Lectures
May 28,29 & 30, 2011
Memorial Day Weekend at Roselawn Cemetary
The Roselawn Cemetery Chapel (1902-1904), designed by Cass Gilbert and Thomas Holyoke in the style of a medieval English country church, will be open for visitors on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, May 28, 29, and 30, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.. There will be an organ concert each day beginning at 11 a.m. on Saturday and Monday, and noon on Sunday. While the cemetery, designed by Gilbert in 1902, is open to visitors all year, the chapel is normally open only for funerals and memorial services. Roselawn Cemetery is at Larpenteur Avenue and Victoria Street, Roseville, Minnesota. For more information, see www.roselawncemetery.com.
February 15, 2011
U.S. Supreme Court Turns 75: The Washington-Baltimore Report
Join the Cass Gilbert Society on Tuesday, February 15, 2011, at the University Club, 420
Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, at 7 p.m. Members of the Cass Gilbert Society who toured Washington and Baltimore in mid-November will report on their experiences.
The presentation will focus on the U.S. Supreme Court, which celebrated its 75th anniversary last fall. The group was welcomed by curator Catherine Fitts and given a wonderful behind-the-scenes tour of the building and the exhibit that had been organized by Catherine and her staff. Before our visit, the group met with C. Ford Peatross at the Library of Congress who displayed a variety of Cass Gilbert drawings, including some of the Supreme Court.
The group also toured the historic Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress with its extensive mural program, many by painters who also worked with Gilbert; the White House; and the U.S. Capitol, which helped establish context for the Minnesota Capitol.
The last day of the tour was spent in Baltimore with Barbara Christen. We focused on the work of McKim, Mead and White, especially the Ross Winans House. Gilbert was the superintendent for the construction of the house in 1881, the year before he returned to Saint Paul. Other highlights included the multistory cast-iron library of the Peabody Institute and the Baltimore Cathedral.
Participants will talk about various aspects of the tour, providing personal perspectives and relating the buildings and sites to Cass Gilbert’s larger career. Several of the group have provided photographs for the presentation. Refreshments will be served following the lecture. Admission is free to members and students and is $5.00 for non-members.
November 9, 2010
Cass Gilbert: Architect of Intersecting Worlds
Marjorie Pearson and Katherine Solomonson gave a joint presentation on Cass Gilbert at the annual Society of Architectural Historians conference on April 23, 2010, in Chicago, as part of a session on Midwest Architecture Outside of Chicago. An expanded version of their talk, Cass Gilbert: Architect of Intersecting Worlds, will be presented to the Society at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, on Tuesday, November 9, 2010.
May 11, 2010
THE CUBA REPORT
Is there a Cass Gilbert connection with Cuba? Dewey Berscheid, then the editor of the Cass Gilbert Society Newsletter, did additional research and headlined the next issue of the Newsletter, “Our Man in Havana?” in which described his unsuccessful efforts to verify the attribution.
Dewey’s article was the inspiration for a Cass Gilbert Society research trip to Cuba. The
organizational effort of several years was undertaken by Jim Hirsh. Last July the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a license for six members of the Cass Gilbert Society to visit Cuba to investigate the possible role of Cass Gilbert and other American architects in the construction of the Cuban capitol and related buildings. Wendy Weimer, president of the Cass Gilbert Society, is a Spanish speaker and assisted with translation. Cindy Stephani, vice president of the Cass Gilbert Society, is a tour guide at the Minnesota State Capitol. Tom Blanck, an architect, is an expert on the architecture of Cass Gilbert and a founding member of the Cass Gilbert Society. Marjorie Pearson is an architectural historian, historic preservation consultant, and past president of the Cass Gilbert Society. Jim Hirsh, who was the chief organizer of the trip, is the general counsel of the Cass Gilbert Society. Carol Highsmith is a nationally known architectural photographer. She has recently donated thephotographs she has taken of the Woolworth Building to the Cass Gilbert Society and to the Library of Congress.
Five of the six members of the group will be reporting on the Cuba trip, what they observed and researched, and the Cuban architects and historians with whom theyconsulted. The talk will be illustrated with the photographs of Carol Highsmith and other tour participants. While the focus of the evening will be the Cuban capitol, El Capitolio, and its environs, other topics will include a brief overview of Cuban history and the country’s relationship with the United States; the role of American architects in Cuba, including several contemporaries and associates of Cass Gilbert, and their buildings; and historic preservation efforts in Havana.
Admission to the lecture is free for members of the Cass Gilbert Society and the University Club as well as students. There is a $5 charge for non-members. Refreshments will be served following the presentation.
November 22, 2009
150th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION FOR CASS GILBERT
The Cass Gilbert Society will host a celebration to honor this nationally recognized architect whose buildings are an important part of Minnesota history.
The 150th birthday celebration will be held on Saturday, November 21, 2009, and feature a free tour of the Minnesota State Capitol. Guides from the Minnesota State Historical Society will focus on the Cass Gilbert story and the architectural details of the capitol. The free tours, which begin at 2pm, require reservations by calling 651-296-2881. A LEGO™ model of the capitol will be on display to delight visitors young and old.
An exhibit highlighting buildings designed by Cass Gilbert over 50 years will be on display in the North Corridor of the capitol building and will continue to be available for public view for two weeks following the celebration.
Festivities will include a birthday cake that will be served in the capitol’s Rathskeller at 3:30 p.m. This event is free and open to the public.
The celebration will continue on Sunday, November 22, 2009, with a champagne reception at the Gilbert Building, 413 Wacouta Street, St. Paul, Minnesota, between 4 and 6 p.m. Welcoming remarks and a birthday toast will be made at 4:30 p.m. Tours will be given of the building at 5 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. This event, which is also free, is being sponsored by Charlie Neimeyer, Edina Realty, and the McCullough Companies.
For more information contact Cindy Stephani at 612-719-8419.
February 17, 2009
Gail Fenske to Speak on Her Book, The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York.
Gail Fenske, Professor of Architecture at the School of Art, Architecture and Historic Preservation, Rogers Williams University, will speak on her book, The Skyscraper and the City: The Woolworth Building and the Making of Modern New York, why she wrote it and what it meant to her.
Following her talk, Dr. Fenske will answer questions and sign copies of her book. Refreshments will be served. Admission is free to Cass Gilbert Society members and students with ID; the charge is $5.00 for non-members.
Gail Fenske is also the author of “The Image of the City: The Woolworth Building and the Creation of the New York Skyline,” a chapter in Cass Gilbert: Life and Work, edited by Barbara Christen and Steven Flanders (W. W. Norton, 2001), and “Cass Gilbert’s Skyscrapers in New York: The Twentieth-Century City and the Urban Picturesque,” in Inventing the Skyline: The Architecture of Cass Gilbert (Columbia University Press, 2000).
November 2008
Katherine Solomonson to Speak November 11, 2008:
"Cass Gilbert: Re-Imaging the Western Landscape"
Katherine Solomonson, Ph.D., will speak to the Cass Gilbert Society on November 11, 2008, at 7 p.m. at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul. Her talk is titled "Cass Gilbert: Re-Imaging the Western Landscape." Admission is free to members and students with current student identification cards; there is a $5 charge for nonmembers of the Cass Gilbert Society. Refreshments will be served following the lecture.
Dr. Solomonson, associate dean for academic affairs in the School of Architecture, College of Design, at the University of Minnesota, has been researching and writing about the Minnesota career of Cass Gilbert and the work of his St. Paul office as it shaped the perception of architecture in the Great Northwest. She has focused on the role of Gilbert in fostering architectural professionalism in the late nineteenth century, the growth of architectural offices, and the development of architect-client relationships.
The railroad was a key factor in the furtherance of Gilbert’s career, both as a client and in enabling him to pursue a geographically wide-ranging practice.
April 2008
Annette Atkins, author of newly published book for the Minnesota Sesquicentennial, Creating Minnesota: A History from the Inside Out, (Minnesota Historical Society Press), will speak on Tuesday, April 8, 2008, at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, at 7:00 P.M.
February 2008
Cass Gilbert Society Travelers to Tell Tour Tales
Join participants in the Cass Gilbert Society tour to New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut on Tuesday, February 12, 2008, at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, at 7:00 P.M.
Members of the group, including Tom Blanck, Jim Law and Jean Velleu, Nick Marcucci and Ann Schroder, Marjorie Pearson, and Cindy Stephani, will present an illustrated talk about the October tour.
Society members from Connecticut, California, Minnesota, Maryland, and New York, met in New York City at the U.S. Custom House on Bowling Green on October 11, 2007, to begin an intense five-day tour of Cass Gilbert sites. Organized by Helen Post Curry and Steven Flanders, the tour was also guided by Barbara Christen and Marjorie Pearson. When Gilbert relocated from Saint Paul to New York at the beginning of the twentieth century, he applied the lessons he had learned in Minnesota to the design of public, institutional, and commercial buildings. Tour highlights included the Brooklyn Army Terminal; the West Street Building and Woolworth Building in lower Manhattan; the newly restored Essex County Courthouse in Newark, N.J.; the Cass Gilbert Historic District in Waterbury, Connecticut, where the city approved restoration of the City Hall; and Cass Gilbert’s country house and the local cemetery in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
November 13, 2007
Talk by Larry Millett, author of The AIA Guide to the Twin Cities.
Join the Cass Gilbert Society on Tuesday, November 13, at 7:00 P.M. at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul. Larry Millett, author of the AIA Guide to the Twin Cities (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2007), will be speaking on Cass Gilbert and the architecture of Saint Paul.
Millett, who was architecture critic for the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, is also the author of several books that explore the architectural heritage of the Twin Cities, including Lost Twin Cities (1992) and Twin Cities Then and Now (1996).
The AIA Guide, which is subtitled “The Essential Source on the Architecture of Minneapolis and St. Paul,” does not slight the work of Cass Gilbert, which ranges from the Minnesota State Capitol to the warehouses of Lowertown, among its fifteen hundred total entries.
Admission to the lecture is free to Society members. There is a $5.00 charge for nonmembers. Refreshments will be served after the lecture. A demonstration of the Cass Gilbert Society’s redesigned website (see story inside) will be available before and after the lecture.
January 26, 2010
Report on Oberlin College Tour
Participants in the Oberlin tour last September will present their impressions and analyses to Cass Gilbert Society members and friends at the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul, on January 26, 2010, at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served following the presentation.
Cass Gilbert had a relationship with Oberlin College that stretched from the opening of Finney Chapel in 1908 to the completion of the Quadrangle for the Graduate School of Theology in 1931. As consulting architect to the college, Gilbert also designed the Cox Administration Building (1915), the Allen Memorial Art Museum (1917), and the Allen Memorial Hospital (1925). Working in collaboration with Oberlin President Henry Churchill King and the Olmsted Brothers, he devised a long-range campus plan that would have arranged the college buildings around Tappan Square, the Oberlin town green. While his plan was never executed, it is interesting to compare to Gilbert's plans for the University of Minnesota and the University of Texas.
Tom Blanck and Marjorie Pearson will discuss Gilbert's architecture in Oberlin, as well as the Welzheimer/Johnson House, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1948-1949, and now owned by Oberlin College. Vincent Platt, Carolyn Nayematsu, Jim Law, Jean Velleu and Wendy Weimer, other tour participants, will also offer their impressions.
May 10, 2009
A CASS GILBERT TOUR FOR MOTHER’S DAY, May 10, 2009
Celebrate Mother’s Day by joining the Cass Gilbert Society in a tour of Cass Gilbert’s work on Summit Hill and Ramsey Hill. Gilbert and his family had long associations with the neighborhood, from his first independent commission, the house he designed in 1882 for his mother Elizabeth Gilbert on Ashland Avenue, to the house he designed for himself on Heather Place, to a wide variety of residences for prosperous clients in fashionable architectural styles. In addition, the tour will view the work of Gilbert’s early partner, James Knox Taylor, and his chief draftsman and protégé, Thomas Holyoke.
The tour will be offered at two times. The first tour will begin at 2:00 p.m.; the second tour will begin at 3:30 p.m. The tours will follow the same route in both time slots. Architects Thomas Blanck and Sonja Mason and architectural historian Marjorie Pearson will be the tour guides. All tours will begin at Lookout Park, at the junction of Summit Avenue and Ramsey Street, east of the University Club, 420 Summit Avenue, Saint Paul. The cost will be $10 for members and $15 for non-members, payable at the beginning of the tour. Each tour participant will receive a tour book that combines information from two previous Cass Gilbert Society tours in the area. For further information, call Marjorie Pearson, 612-338-1987 (days).
September 2008
Living With Cass Gilbert: FALL TOUR, September 28, 2008
Three Architects Describe Their Experiences
Visit three Cass Gilbert-designed houses in Saint Paul on September 28 between 2 and 5 p.m. Architects Gar Hargens, 548 Portland Avenue, and Nicholas Marcucci, 552 Portland Avenue, live in Portland Terrace, at the corner of Kent Street, a Gilbert commission from 1888. The row was built for attorney Leidum Sharpe, who lived with his family at 548 Portland, one of the end houses, and rented out the other four units. The house at 552 Portland is in the middle of the row. Architect Peter O’Brien, 505 Summit Avenue, corner of Mackubin Street, owns the George W. Freeman House (1896), built for the president of the Gotzian Shoe Manufacturing Company. The impressive façade is of Minnesota limestone with Indiana limestone details. O’Brien has been restoring the house to Gilbert’s original design, room by room, since 1990. The three architects will lead tours of their houses, beginning every half hour. Each tour will be limited to 20 participants at a time. Tour participants will move from house to house and can visit the houses in any order. Refreshments will be served on the porch at 505 Summit Avenue. The garden of the property on Summit Avenue west of the Freeman House will also be open for visitors. The cost is $20 for Cass Gilbert Society members and $25 for nonmembers. Tickets will be available at each of the houses.
October 11-15, 2007
Cass Gilbert Society Tour of New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Download the slideshow, "Touring with Cass Gilbert" by Marjorie Pearson [13.4MB PDF]
November 18, 2006
Cass Gilbert Society Four-Day Tour of Central Texas: Austin & San Antonio.
St. Paul Walking Tour, Fall, 2004
St. Paul Lowertown Tour, 2003
| Gail Fenske | "Book: The Skyscraper and the City" | 2009-02-17 |
| Katherine Solomonson | "Cass Gilbert: Re-Imaging the Western Landscape" | 2008-11-11 |
| Larry Millett | "The AIA Guide to the Twin Cities" | 2007-11-13 |
| Hampton Smith | "The Spirit and the Bride: A History of St. Clement’s Episcopal Church 1893-1996" | 2007-09-11 |
| 7 GGS Members | "Cass Gilbert Society Texas Travelers Tour Report" | 2007-04-24 |
| Michael J. Bjornberg & Robert D. Loveridge, Jr. |
"Minnesota State Capitol Restoration" | 2007-02-27 |
| William Seale | "Historical and Architectural Restoration: State Capitols" | 2006-10-31 |
| Marjorie Pearson | "Cass Gilbert: Architectural Ambassador" | 2006-05-09 |
| William Morgan | "The Kerr Block, 1887" | 2006-05-09 |
| Patty Dean | "Cass Gilbert in Montana" | 2006-02-28 |
| Leigh Roethke | "Minnesota Capitol: Centennial Story" | 2005-09-20 |
| Sheila Smith | "Collecting Minnesota Capitol Memorabilia" | 2005-02-15 |
| Helen Curry | "Cass Gilbert's Family in Connecticut" | 2004-10-04 |
| Patricia Murphy | "Cass Gilbert's Origins and Early Career" | 2004-09-14 |
| Lance Neckar | "Cass Gilbert at the University of Minnesota: Models, Expos, Plans" | 2004-04-20 |
| C. Ford Peatross | "Cass Gilbert: Collection at the Library of Congress" | 2003-11-18 |
| Sally Webster | "Minnesota Capitol Design & Decoration" | 2003-10-14 |
| Paul Larson | "Cass Gilbert's Art and Life Abroad" | 2003-04-29 |
| 10 CGS Members | "Cass Gilbert Society 10-Building Tour, New York City" | 2003-02-25 |
| Mary Beth Betts | "Cass Gilbert's Architectural Esthetics" | 2002-09-24 |
| David Lanegran | "Saint Paul, Context of Cass Gilbert" | 2002-04-30 |
| Barbara Christen | "Minnesota Capitol Approaches & University of Minnesota Planning" | 2002-02-05 |
| Neesse & Thomas | "Their Cass Gilbert House, West St. Paul" | 2001-11-03 |
| Charles Lock | "Cass Gilbert MIT, Europe, MM&W, St. Paul Railroad | 2001-09-25 |
| William Morgan | "Cass Gilbert: Politics of Business, 1874-1905" | 2001-04-17 |
| Sanchez-Coulter | "The Seligman House, Helena, Montana" | 2001-02-20 |
| Geoffrey Blodgett | "The Young Cass Gilbert, 1880-1882" | 2000-11-14 |
| Steven Flanders | "Cass Gilbert Life & Work: the Public Domain" | 2000-10-03 |
| Sharon Irish | "Modern Traditionalist: His Esthetics" | 2000-04-25 |
| Paul Larson | "Cass Gilbert: Lost Early Work - 1883-1886" | 2000-02-22 |
| Tom Blanck | "Bethlehem Presbyterian Church" | 1999-11-16 |
| Gail Fenske | "Cass Gilbert: Woolworth Building, New York City" | 1999-10-19 |
| Geoffrey Blodgett | "Cass Gilbert: Early Years, From His Start" | 1999-05-08 |
| O'Sullivan | "MN Capitol"-Kompelien "Politics, Preservation" | 1999-03-23 |
| Herb Grika | "A Book: Minnesota's State Capitol" | 1999-01-02 |