Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert (August 29, 1861 – October 25, 1952[1]) was an American architect of the late-19th and early-20th centuries best known for designing townhouses and mansions.
Born in New York City,[2] Gilbert was a descendant of English and New English ancestors. One of these was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, to whom Queen Elizabeth I of England granted a patent for the colonization of North America. Sir Humphrey's ambitious plans ended when he was lost at sea with most of his company on their return voyage from the exploration of Newfoundland. Other members of the family, however, soon planted the name in North America.[2]
C.P.H. Gilbert's father was Loring Gilbert, a direct descendant of John Gilbert, the second son of Giles Gilbert of Bridgwater, Somerset, England, who came to America early in the 17th century and settled at Dorchester, near Boston, and died at Taunton, Massachusetts, in 1654. Loring Gilbert was a leading commission merchant who had a successful career. He married Caroline C. Etchebery, and they had one son, Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert. Loring Gilbert died in 1893.[2]
C. P. H. Gilbert received a careful education, studying both in America and in Europe, such as the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. After being prepared for college he took courses in civil engineering and architecture, and later studied painting, sculpture and the fine arts in general. After college, he began practical work as an assistant in the office of a prominent firm of architects, where he received the training necessary to prepare him for engaging in his own business.[2] As a young man he designed buildings in the mining towns of Colorado and Arizona before returning to New York around 1885.
Careeredit
In 1886, at the age of twenty-five, Gilbert began practicing as an architect in New York City, and received commission to design buildings of all kinds. One of Gilbert's first projects was the design of fourteen brownstone rowhouses that now form a part of the Manhattan Avenue Historic District. Gilbert designed the block for Hoboken developer John Brown in 1886.[3]
Another noteworthy building was the 1888 Richardsonian Romanesque mansion at Eighth Avenue and Carroll Street in Park Slope, Brooklyn for Thomas Adams Jr., a chewing gum magnate. From 1893 on, Gilbert had a very large business, which grew steadily. In addition, he was a director or a stockholder in a number of large manufacturing companies outside of New York.
He saw action during the Spanish–American War of 1898.[4] After the war he returned to New York.
By 1900 Gilbert had acquired a reputation as a specialist in designing opulent townhouses and mansions. Among Gilbert's Fifth Avenue palazzi is the 1905 Neo-Renaissancemansion of Morton Freeman Plant, son of railroad tycoon Henry B. Plant. Through the 1920s he designed more than 100 New York City mansions in various styles; several of them along Fifth Avenue have now been re-purposed for institutional use. In education, client list and architectural style, Gilbert largely followed in the footsteps of Richard Morris Hunt, whose petit château on Fifth Avenue for William Kissam Vanderbilt set a model for French Late Gothic limestone châteaux to house the elite of the Gilded Age.[5] Amongst Gilbert's clients were wealthy and influential industrialists and bankers such as Harry F. Sinclair, Joseph Raphael De Lamar, Felix M. Warburg, Otto H. Kahn, Adolph Lewisohn, Augustus G. Paine, Jr. and families such as the Baches, Reids, Wertheims, Sloanes and other.[6] Gilbert also designed a number of mansions and buildings on Long Island and in upstate New York in the 1920s.[6]
Gilbert retreated from public life, and by the late 1920s stopped designing any new houses. He retired to Pelham Manor, New York in Westchester County, where he died on October 25, 1952, at his home on 216 Townsend Avenue, at the age of 92.[1][4][7] He is interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.
Gilbert was married to Florence Cecil Moss, daughter of Theodore Moss of New York City, and had two children: Dudley Pierrepont Gilbert and Vera Pierrepont Gilbert.[2] He lived at 33 Riverside Drive and had a villa in Newport, Rhode Island at Ochre Point.[8]
1886 – Fourteen brownstowne rowhouses in the Manhattan Avenue Historic District: 120-40 Manhattan Avenue, 39-43 West 105th Street, 38-44 West 106th Street
1888-1904 – at least eight of the Montgomery Place mansions (#11, 14, 16–19, 21, 25, 36–50, 54–60), between 8th Avenue and Prospect Park, Brooklyn[6]
^ abcdefHarrison, Mitchell Charles, ed. (1902), "Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert", Prominent and Progressive Americans: An Encyclopædia of Contemporaneous Biography, vol. 1, New York: The Tribune Association, pp. 132–133
^ ab"Obituary Charles Pierrepont H. Gilbert". The New York Times. October 27, 1952. Retrieved December 4, 2010.
^Craven, Wayne. Gilded Mansions: Grand Architecture and High Society (2008) p. 310.
^ abcdefghGray, Christopher (February 9, 2003). "Streetscapes/Charles Pierrepont Henry Gilbert; A Designer of Lacy Mansions for the City's Eminent". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
^Staff (September 16, 1909). "Miss Vera Gilbert engaged" (PDF). The New York Times. Retrieved December 3, 2010.
^Calderone, Michael (July 26, 2006). "A $32 Million Townhouse Sells on East 67th". The New York Observer. Archived from the original on October 21, 2012. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
^Maher, James T. The Twilight of Splendor (1975) p.336
^Gray, Christopher (December 23, 2007). "Where Historic Town Houses Still Hold Court". The New York Times. Retrieved November 14, 2010.
^Dunlap, David W. (July 24, 2007). "Two Midtown Town Houses Are Designated Landmarks". City Room. Retrieved May 29, 2021.
^Manley, Bill (2011). "History". Archived from the original on November 30, 2010. Retrieved January 26, 2011.
^LaChiusa, Chuck. "Knox House". buffaloah.com. Buffalo Architecture and History. Retrieved February 24, 2021.
^Interiors were decorated by Hofstatter and Baumgarten and featured in House and Garden 1917 (John F. Pile, A History of Interior Design 2005:316).
^Doane, Ralph Harrington (May 1919). "The Residence of Augustus G. Paine, Esq". The Architectural Review. VIII (5). New York: The Architectural Review, Inc.: 123–126.
^"Architecture of the Champlain Valley, Willsboro" (PDF). Adirondack Architectural Heritage. 2010. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 25, 2010. Retrieved November 1, 2010.