Guastavino Home on the Market
Guastavino's home in Bay Shore, N.Y., is on the market.
Credit: Eric Ramsay
Sept. 8, 2004
Dear Preservation 911,
From what I've heard from Long Island preservationists, the house is under contract to a new buyer and a demolition permit has already been filed.
This house was the family residence of one of America's most significant builders, Rafael Guastavino y Esposito (1872-1950), son of Rafael Guastavino y Moreno (1842-1908). RGyM was an architect working in Barcelona who emigrated to America in the 1881 and, after failing to find work as an architect, became a builder of fireproof structural vaults and domes. His vaulting technique was an adaptation of a medieval type of Mediterranean construction known as timbrel vaulting. The company's method transcended pure structural uses and became a key aesthetic component in many of America's most important buildings of the period.
Guastavino's first major project in the States was the Boston Public Library. His vaults are extremely strong, made of cheap materials (ceramic tile and Portland cement), fireproof, could be erected quicker than his competitors' vaults, and could also be adapted to various shapes and sizes. He also had 24 patents on the technique. His spiral stairways are particularly breathtaking.
The success of the Boston project launched Guastavino's career, and he proceeded to work with the greatest architects of the late 19th and early 20th century: McKim Mead and White, Cass Gilbert, Warren and Wetmore, Carrere and Hastinings, Palmer and Hornbostel.
Buildings that contain Guastavino's vaults and domes can be found in every major city in America. Anytime you look up in a building and see a herringbone pattern of ceramic tile, 6x12 with a raised mortar joint, you can be almost 100% certain he built it. Guastavino's firm worked on almost every major public building built in the United States between 1890 and 1920. It went out of business in the 1960s.
RGyE, born in Barcelona in 1872, worked for his father, probably from a very young age, and took over the company upon his father's death in 1908. He is responsible for some of the company's most daring and beautiful structures, including the dome over the crossing of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in NYC, The Library of the Albany State Education Building, The Nebraska State Capitol, The Registry Room ceiling at Ellis Island (also a rebuild) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
RGyE undoubtedly built this house in Bay Shore for his own family, and may have died in it. The listed construction date is 1917. The photos speak for themselves, but no one knows much about this house since it has been owned for the last 50 years by a very private family who would not allow access to it. I've heard that it has had very little work done to it over the years.
I think it could be easily argued that this house has international significance. Both RGs were born in Spain. RG Sr.'s residence in Barcelona, which he built with his own hands, much like his son's did in Bay Shore, is now gone. The family home in Asheville, N.C., is now a museum, I believe. Judging from the photos, the house in Bay Shore employs the timbrel-vault technique that was the company's trademark, and may well have been designed by RG Jr. It was certainly built by the company.
On the international side, there has recently been a tremendous outpouring of interest in the Guastavino legacy in Spain, specifically Cataluna, where RG Sr. attended school and did the majority of his work before leaving for America.
In 2001, I attended an exposition on RG Sr.'s work in Spain and his legacy in America. This was pretty unprecedented and was the first step in a revival of interest in a native son whose work had been vastly underappreciated and was quickly overshadowed by the Spanish Modernista movement that directly followed his departure from Spain.
Sincerely,
Daniel Lane
Architectural Conservator
Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, Inc.
New York, New York
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