Rafael Guastavino’s Indelible Mark on America

On Ellis Island, the main building’s registry room houses a vaulted ceiling designed by Rafael Guastavino. (Jean-Christophe Benoist/CC BY 3.0)

When entering a building or a room, one naturally looks around. Yet Rafael Guastavino’s engineering and architectural artistry immediately draws the eyes upward. For a century and longer, the juxtaposition of tiles arranged in domes and arches have awed countless people.

In fact, the Spanish immigrant’s indelible mark graces numerous iconic American structures, including New York’s City Hall subway station and the Registry Room at Ellis Island, as well as Boston’s Public Library. The myriad American buildings receiving Guastavino’s signature stamp are grandly emblematic of a hopeful and prosperous America.

A Major Talent

Architect and builder Rafael Guastavino (1842–1908). (Public Domain)

Guastavino, born in 1842 in Spain, aspired to become a musician, according to John Ochsendorf, a professor in civil and environmental engineering and architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Instead, Guastavino became the master behind a unique, fireproof, patented ceiling tile arch system that involves self-supporting arches and interlocking terracotta tiles.

Guastavino entered Barcelona’s School of Master Builders in 1861, studying such subjects as mechanics, descriptive geometry, and construction—all of which prepared him to understand the age-old European system of tile vaulting. Ochsendorf’s 2010 extensive resource “Guastavino Vaulting: The Art of Structural Tile” states that Guastavino’s well-rounded education in Spain enabled him to enter and win an 1868 design competition for a textile mill project. He applied his accumulated architectural knowledge and innate creativity and, as Ochsendorf pointed out, “succeeded spectacularly. His first major project garnered significant attention, with a contemporary newspaper account describing the young architect’s ability to combine stone masonry and brick in order to create ‘a magnificent industrial establishment.’”

After Guastavino earned a medal of merit for architectural plans submitted to the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, he decided to immigrate to the United States in 1881 in order to bring “revolutionary lightweight vaulting ... technology to North American cities for the first time,” Ochsendorf wrote. With him came his 9-year-old son, Rafael Jr., who would eventually join his father as business partner.

Safety and Beauty

Guastavino's tiles cover the ceiling of the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant in Manhattan, N.Y. (Leonard J. DeFrancisci/CC BY-SA 3.0)

By 1882, Guastavino’s architectural drawings in the Spanish Renaissance style, featured in the new magazine Decorator and Furnisher, launched his U.S. career. He subsequently submitted the winning design for the Progress Club in New York City. After that project, over the next several years, Guastavino was involved in construction aspects of more than 200 structures in New York City, including the main entrance to Carnegie Hall and the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station.

Each time he approached a new construction project, it was with a focus on safety: how to make a building, especially vaulted ceilings, both stunningly beautiful and durably fireproof. “According to Guastavino, his vaults functioned through an internal bonding together of the tiles and mortar, which allowed each vault to function as a unified material that could take tension, and therefore exerted no thrust on the supports,” Ochsendorf wrote. In fact, between 1885 and 1937, his company filed and received 24 patents for “technically innovative” construction systems.

Looking west from a balcony at Bridgemarket's vaulted ceiling, under the Queensboro Bridge. (Public Domain)

“The geometry of many interlocking groin vaults defies logic,” Jane Rogers Vann said in an email. Vann is a retired Rowe Professor Emerita at Union Presbyterian Seminary of Richmond, Virginia, and a Guastavino Alliance board member.

A Guastavino dome is in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington. And in 1893, Guastavino was the principal architect of the Spanish pavilion at the World’s Columbian Exposition, also called the Chicago World’s Fair.

Standing the Test of Time

Guastavino settled and built a home in Black Mountain, North Carolina, near Asheville, the site of the Basilica of St. Lawrence, which he designed. What he dubbed his “Spanish Castle” no longer exists; it was razed in the 1940s due to neglect. Yet one of the two kilns he built on the property—kilns that at one time could fire thousands of tiles at a time, including those used to construct the basilica—is still intact. Guastavino died in 1908 and is buried at the basilica. His son, Rafael Jr., who continued his father’s work at their Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company, died in 1950.

Inside the dome of the Basilica of St. Lawrence, where architect Rafael Guastavino is buried, in Asheville, N.C. (Jen G. Bowen /CC BY-SA 3.0)

Ochsendorf noted that although elaborate and ornate construction projects began to wane by the 1960s, Guastavino’s vaulted ceiling tile system has stood the test of time. “No Guastavino vault has ever failed due to a lack of load capacity. ... Although Ellis Island was abandoned for decades and the buildings fell into terrible disrepair, the Guastavino vault remained in excellent condition. Upon careful inspection, only 17 of the nearly 30,000 tiles were replaced.”

Vann summed up the master’s legacy: “Without the work of Guastavino, our architectural heritage would be less interesting, less beautiful, and less apt to stand the test of time.”