Cass Gilbert Abroad: The Young Architect's European Tour

Cass Gilbert's architectural career dawned in his twentieth year, not with an American building but with a sheaf of European sketches. In 1880 he crossed the Atlantic with high hopes but only the vaguest prospect of work, either abroad or on his return. Armed with pencil, pen, and watercolor brushes, he visually raided the cities and countrysides of England, Italy, and France for their architectural wonders, their scenery, and anything else that served his fascination with the monumental and the picturesque.
Gilbert returned home bitterly disappointed at not finding a position in England; but the spoils he brought back with him - a matchless portfolio of studies and sketches - earned him entree into one of the foremost architectural offices in the country and served as the foundation for a long and fruitful career. It is only fitting that these earliest glimmerings of his talent, strong enough even then to win acclaim among his peers in New York and Paris, should at last be brought into the light.
Cass Gilbert Abroad combines the fledgling architect's pen-and-ink and pencil drawings and glorious watercolor sketches from his European tour with letters he wrote home to his mother and to his closest friend and architectural confidant, Minnesota's most prolific architect Clarence Johnston.