Cass Gilbert vs. Clarence Johnston

Cass Gilbert vs. Clarence Johnston

Cass Gilbert:

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, various railroad stations, and the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington D.C.  His reputation declined among some professionals during the age of modernism, but Gilbert was on the design committee that guided and eventually approved the modernist design of Manhattan's Rockefeller Center.  Gilbert's two buildings on the University of Texas at Austin campus, (Sutton Hall-1918 and Battle Hall-1911) are widely recognized by architectural historians as some of the finest works of architecture in the state.  Designed in a Spanish-Mediterranean revival style, the two buildings became the stylists for the later expansion of the campus.  It also helped popularize the style throughout the state.

Clarence Johnston:

Johnston designed scores of mansions and stately houses, mostly in St. Paul, as well as dozens of academic buildings, churches, schools, sports arenas, prisons, hospitals, and asylums. He is best known for his houses, but he specialized in another area also.  In his long tenure as state architect and in commissions for institutional clients, he designed for multitudes.  Even at the start of his career Johnston knew how to think big, just like Gilbert and his ideas of skyscrapers.  There was no such thing as the "Clarence Johnston style" he composed in great variety.  He designed many homes on and around Summit Ave. also, so I would say comparing Johnston to Gilbert, Gilbert designed a lot more of the larger scale buildings and Johnston designed a lot more homes and features out and around these homes.  In the end, Johnston's works have touched the full spectrum of Minnesotans and continue to do so in the twenty fifth century.

Cass Gilbert  

Clarence Johnston