RAFAEL GUASTAVINO - The man who introduced the Catalan vault to America

Part One

The New York Subway - its glazed ceramic domes alternating with leaded glass windows.

The Manhattan City Hall subway station ‘was called an underground cathedral when it opened in 1904. The public was afraid to go underground at that time, and so these vaults and this beautiful, decorative, colourful ceiling really helped people feel comfortable in a grand space below the city’.

The tunnel lit by chandeliers

The first line of the New York subway was built by the Interborough Rapid Transit Company and inaugurated in October 1904. The company asked Guastavino to design a station and tunnels worthy of a palace. The result was the City Hall Station, a space full of vaults, exposed brick arches, ceramics, and chandeliers. The subway station was so spectacular that it was known as ‘the Mona Lisa of subway stations.’

The City Hall subway station closed to the public in 1945. Eighty years later the vaulting is still in good condition. Underground tours to look at the tilework, skylights, and architecture are held several times a year through the New York Transit Museum.

Archway detail

Rediscovering Guastavino – The 2014 exhibition

An exhibition in 2014 titled, ‘Palaces for the People: Guastavino and the Art of Structural Tile,’ was held to showcase the work of Spanish immigrants Rafael Guastavino and his son, Rafael Jr., who immigrated to New York from Barcelona in the late 19th century. The exhibition, at the Museum of the City of New York, was curated by Martin Moeller and John Ochsendorf, MacArthur Fellow at MIT, and teacher of architecture and engineering.

Guastavino refined and popularized the Catalan vault technique - The Bóveda Catalana or volta Catalana - a method of constructing thin-tile vaulting, which he improved by using Portland cement to replace the lime-mortar used at the time.

Guastavino tiled vaults grace some of New York's most famous Beaux-Arts landmarks as well as other major buildings across the United States. There are 250 long-overlooked marvels of engineering and architectural beauty throughout New York’s five boroughs.

The Oyster Bar & Restaurant opened in February 1913 in Grand Central Station. The 440-seat establishment quickly became famous for its seafood. Under new management in the 70s, the Oyster Bar featured fresh fish, lobsters, crabs and thirty different types of oysters.

Ochsendorf and Moeller are still trying to find all the Gustavino’s existing works, ‘and that’s a really terrific treasure hunt for us - to think that there are projects still to be found. Our hope is really to activate the public in our search for Guastavino spaces because we are certain there are dozens still to be discovered in New York.’

On the prowl for undiscovered Guastavinos, Ochsendorf has invited everyone to join the hunt - to look for artistically placed thin, coloured tiles, arranged in vaults, and to let him know what they find.

He thinks the work should be better known. ‘People walk into a building, and say, 'Ah, the windows are Tiffany,' Ochsendorf says. ‘We want to get to the point where they say, “The windows are Tiffany, and the ceilings are Guastavino”. We are slowly getting there.’

The Boathouse at Prospect Park, Brooklyn, New York, built by Guastavino in 1905

Some examples of the Guastavino’s work:

Their tiled vaults can be seen all over New York City. Examples include: the Boston Public Library, Grand Central Terminal with its famous Oyster Bar, Grant’s Tomb, the Great Hall at Ellis Island, Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian. Add to these the U.S. Supreme Court, the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, the Elephant House at the Bronx Zoo, the Boathouse and Tennis Shelter in Central Park, and the Riverside Church.

Guastavino ceiling, Porter Hall, Pittsburgh now part of Carnegie Mellon University

The Guastavinos also designed stunning private spaces for the Rockefellers, the Astors and the Vanderbilts - parts of Vanderbilt’s Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina - as well as Ashville’s Basilica of Saint Lawrence.

Guastavino’s techniques and talents were used by leading architects of the day.

According to Ochsendorf, ‘Names like Cass Gilbert and Charles McKim, Richard Morris Hunt - would design the building. Their name was on the building, but on their plans and drawings they would write “Guastavino here”, Ochsendorf says. ‘And the Guastavino Company would come in and do the detailed design of these vaults. The architects trusted them to do what was best.’

Keeping the tradition of the Catalan vault alive

Two Spanish professors are determined to prevent the technique of the Bóveda Catalana, the Catalan vault, from dying out.

Fernando Vegas and Camilla Mileto, professors of architecture at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, are encouraging the use of the Catalan vault as a sustainable artisanal construction technique, since only two materials are required to make the terracotta tiles: the clay, and the mortar to bind them together.

Contrary to the usual practice of layering bricks courses on top of one another, the handmade, five-centimetre-thick terracotta tiles are assembled side by side, using highly skilled labour.

The Bóveda Catalana, or Catalan vault, was used by both Antoni Gaudí and Rafael Guastavino. As contemporaries in the early 1860s, Gaudí studied architecture, while Guastavino trained as a master builder, but they both drew on a regional building tradition rooted in the local vernacular building culture.

Guastavino vaults

Guastavino vaults are notable for their elegant, thin-tiled surfaces and their ability to span large spaces with graceful curves - a combination of structural utility and aesthetic beauty.

The Boston Public Library, Guastavino’s first major project, enabled him to start his own company.

The entrance to the Public Library, with mosaic laid on top of the Guastavino vaults

Rafael Guastavino

Rafael Guastavino y Moreno, son of a cabinetmaker of Italian descent was born in Valencia in 1842. At the age of nineteen, Guastavino enrolled in Barcelona’s Escola Especial de Mestres d’Obres (Barcelona’s School of Master Builders). It was the main institution for architectural and construction studies at the time, focused on the technical side of masonry and construction.

Guastavino on the construction site of the Public Library in 1889. He is standing on a newly built arch, dressed in formal wear - stiff collar and tie, long jacket, frock or morning coat - with his formal look completed by a bowler hat.

Guastavino finished his studies and was awarded the title of mestre d’obres, or ‘master builder’, the Catalan equivalent of architectural engineer or master mason. He earned the title because of his revival and mastery of the Bóveda Catalana, Volta Catalana or Catalan vault - a technique that uses thin, layered tiles arranged in successive layers to create lightweight, self-supporting, fireproof arches and vaults.

The Tile House, BayShore, NY.

The technique had been used locally for centuries, but Guastavino refined it and later patented his system using Portland cement instead of lime-based mortar. His innovative approach allowed the construction of elegant, thin, tile vaults and domes that were structurally sound, and required less material and labour than traditional heavy stone vaults.

The Catalan vault is an ancient technique of Roman origin

After the eighth-century Islamic conquest of the Iberian Peninsula, Islamic architectural and engineering influences merged with ancient Mediterranean building traditions, resulting in the development of the Catalan vault.

The Bóveda Catalana, Volta Catalana or Catalan vault, also known as the timbrel vault, is a traditional masonry technique that constructs vaults using thin, overlapping layers of flat bricks or tiles, often laid in a herringbone pattern, set with fast-setting mortar.

Unlike Roman thick stone vaults which relied on gravity and mass, timbrel vaults use two or three layers of thin tiles arranged flatwise, laminated with mortar, to create a shell that is lightweight and strong. Despite their thinness - timbrel vaults can support heavy loads, allowing a gentle curvature over a wide span.

The tiles are self-supporting during construction. The quick-setting mortar allowed the tiler to stand on the already built portion of the vault, building outwards while supported by the section he had just laid.

The fast-hardening plaster allowed the construction of vaults without temporary wooden supports or centering, which speeded up construction.

Guastavino’s buildings in Barcelona.

Guastavino built several notable structures before he left for America.

The Batlló factory complex

Guastavino was involved in several industrial projects, but his most notable was Can Batlló, the Batlló textile mill begun in 1868. Designed with flat brick vaults and girders, supported by iron or steel beams, it was built in what was a village at the time.

Now in Barcelona’s Eixample, Can Batlló has been successfully repurposed as a vibrant public, cultural space. A lively community hub featuring workshops, a cultural centre, a cinema, and urban gardens, managed by the local residents.

Robert Hughes

The Australian chronicler and historian Robert Hugues, author of Barcelona, [Harvill, 1992], describes the brick chimney of the Batlló ceramics factory as ‘a chef d’oeuvre - a high octagonal pipe that rises from a flaring base, tapering slightly toward the top, finished with a small cornice. It has a breathtaking simplicity and the beauty of ancient Persian prayer towers. But its virtues become most apparent when you hunker down at the base and squint upward along the corner lines where the plane faces of the octagon meet. Ground to cornice, they are absolutely straight, the bricks are laid to the tolerance of marquetry, thousands of courses without accumulated error. The tower is a perfect crystal. Though we have lasers, instead of the plumb bobs the Gustavinos had, we do not have their hands, and such brick work will never be done again.’

‘The Gustavinos distilled centuries of brick-and-tile know-how into their work, they knew all the empirical secrets of the wide-span, flat Catalan arch ... three layers of tile are woven together in such a way that a self-supporting tile membrane grows outward from the walls. This sort of structure depends entirely on the craftsman ... The Gustavinos and their American tile makers were so good that in the mid-1980s, when restoration of the great laminated Ellis Island vault began after decades of neglect, it was found that the structure was in such perfect shape that only seventeen of its twenty-nine thousand tiles needed to be replaced.’

The Great Hall at Ellis Island was the first stop for emigrants entering through the port of New York. For years, the building had been in disuse, suffering from the damp, cold climate. When restoration work began, the architects were astonished - only seventeen of Guastavino’s ceramic tiles had to be replaced.

Close-up of the herringbone ceiling of the Ellis Island Great Hall

The Batlló factory was a landmark in industrial architecture, and Guastavino was soon commissioned to build other factories and design Casa Modest Casademunt, a private residence in Barcelona.

La Massa Theater in Vilassar de Dalt

Guastavino’s last Catalan vault project before he emigrated to America was La Massa Theatre in Vilassar de Dalt, near Barcelona.

Built in 1880, with a shallow dome nearly seventeen meters in diameter, it features an oculus at its centre.

The vaults around the dome were framed with steel beams, supported by cast iron columns.

The theatre, with a circular seating area and rectangular stage, was built in only four months and opened in March 1881.

A rising arc of fame

In the early 1870s Guastavino participated in many expositions.

In 1871, he exhibited at the Exposition of Agriculture, Industry and Fine Arts, at the University of Barcelona.

Two years later, his work was shown at the World Exposition in Vienna, gaining him international exposure. Three years after that, Guastavino’s works were included in large expositions organized by the Centre de Mestres d'Obres in Barcelona, and in that same year in the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in the United States, where his proposals for fire-resistant, inexpensive construction methods were acclaimed.

His participation in these expositions promoted his tile vaulting system and helped establish his reputation both in Spain and internationally before his 1881 move to America.

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