Park Slope, Brooklyn, prides itself in architectural beauty as a designated historical district. Someone even paid for signs depicting a map of the area and bragging a bit. The sad mistake on the signs is crediting the WRONG ARCHITECT. The signs credit Cass Gilbert,the designer of the US Customs House ( now the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, at Bowling Green) and the Woolworth Building, in 1913 when it was the tallest building in the world.
The correct architect is the "mansion specialist," according to architectural writer Christopher Gray, C.P.H. Gilbert. Born in Brooklyn to a wealthy founding family, C.P.H. studied at the Beaux Arts School at the Sorbonne in Paris. He built the Fletcher-Sinclair limestone French Gothic beauty on 5th Avenue at 79th Street (now The Ukrainian Institute) and the Woolworth Mansion of Long Island. He designed half of the north Slope nearest Prospect Park and Grand Army Plaza. Remarkable houses, recalling one of his mentors, H.H. Richardson and his perfection of Romanesque Revival style (See the train station and library in New London, CT)
The photo behind the title of this blog is a street of buildings designed by C.P.H. Gilbert. I swoon at the roof-lines.
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