EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone has a story — some more well-known than others. Across Western North Carolina, so much history is buried below the surface. Six feet under. With this series, we introduce you to some of the people who have left marks big and small on this special place we call home.
Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908), a renowned Spanish architect famous for constructing some of the largest freestanding domes in the world, is entombed in the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Asheville, the church which he personally financed and designed.
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More than 100 years after his death, the intricate tiling of Rafael Guastavino has not been replicated. Inside the Basilica of St. Lawrence in downtown Asheville stands an unsupported elliptical dome, the final work of Guastavino, and the largest like it in the world.
Life in Spain
Rafael Guastavino was born on Mar. 1, 1842, in Valencia, Spain. At age 17, he moved to Barcelona to pursue a degree in architecture, abandoning his previous passion for music.
In Barcelona, Guastavino supposedly studied alongside Antoni Gaudi, the famous modernist architect who designed the Sagrada Familia, a cathedral which only now nearing completion after almost 150 years.
While studying, Guastavino lived with his uncle, aunt and their adopted daughter. His adopted cousin, the 16-year-old Pilar, soon became pregnant after Rafael’s arrival. Hurriedly, the young couple married before their first son, Jose, was born in 1860. Before their relationship fell apart, the Guastavinos would produce two further children: Ramon in 1861 and Manuel in 1863.
According to the Asheville Museum of History, ” Rafael had begun a relationship with his son’s nanny, Paulina Roig.” When Pilar found out, she left.
The mother of Guastavino’s fourth son, Rafael Jr., is unclear. It could have been Pilar during a brief period of reconciliation, or it could have been Paulina. Pilar immigrated to Argentina, taking Jose, Ramon and Manuel with her, leaving Rafael Jr. with his father, lending credence to the theory that Rafael Jr. was not her biological son.
Upon graduating, Guastavino began practicing as an architect throughout Catalonia, specializing in vaulting ceilings.
The Guastavino Arch, as his vaults would come to be known, was not Guastavino’s at all, rather it was a revitalization of a several millennia-old technique from the Mediterranean. Guastavino is credited with popularizing the style with contemporary builders, bringing the extravagant display to new generations.
In 1876, the young architect sought to display his vaults in the Americas at the World Exhibition in Philidelphia. He gained praise from fellow architects who marveled at what Guastavino had come to call “Cohesive Construction.”
Moving to the United States
After his taste of America, Guastavino returned to his home country for a few more years before permanently moving to New York City in 1881 at the age of 39.
Guastavino may not have left Spain for opportunities in the New World as millions were in those days, rather he may fled due to a scandal.
There is some evidence to indicate Guastavino scammed his fellow Spaniards before leaving his home country. The con supposedly involved promissory notes, profiting the architect around $400,000 in today’s money according to the Asheville Museum of History.
When Guastavino immigrated to the United States, he brought Paulina and Rafael Jr. with him. It is unclear how long Guastavino stayed with Pauline in the New World, however, by the 1890s, it seems he had moved on to other romantic interests.
Guastavino soon met his final love, Francesca Ramirez, a Mexican immigrant and 17 years his junior. Because he was still legally married to Pilar, Guastavino reportedly lied about their relationship. Francesca was said to be Guastavino’s daughter due to their age gap. The fib fooled few.
After putting out an ad in South American newspapers to try to locate Pilar, Guastavino was unable to find her, legally freeing him to marry Francesca on Sep. 12, 1894.
The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company
Opened in 1889, the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company was named for the man who served as the organization’s president and primary owner.
For the first few years, business was slow. Guastavino got his big break in 1895.
In an expansion, the Boston Public Library sought to add another building. Guastavino was contracted to design and construct a fireproof ceiling. The McKim Building, as it came to be known, was so elegantly adorned by the Spanish architect that his company was soon flooded with design and construction requests.
That same year, Guastavino patented his version of the age-old arch. His technique employed a combination of overlapping layers of terracotta tiles and a lot of plaster of Paris to tie the tiles together.
Guastavino Vaults had several practical uses. Not only were they lightweight and strong, but they were also fireproof. Only a decade after the Chicago Fire, Guastavino’s offer to create beautiful fireproof roofs was a surefire hit.
Under the leadership of Guastavino and later his son, Rafael Jr., the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company worked on over 1,000 buildings across the United States.
Guastavino Jr. was a worthy successor to his father, building domes in the National Cathedral and the Nebraska State Capitol. His most prominent achievement was erecting the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City in 1910. The dome he constructed is credited as the largest ever built without scaffolding.
The younger Guastavino remained the head of his father’s company until selling his shares in 1943. He died in 1950 and is buried in N.Y.
Sources conflict on when and for what reason the company finally went under, but by the early 1960s, The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company had ceased operations.
According to TOCCI, a company that now operates out of what was once the Guastavino tile factory in Massachusetts, the Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company supposedly closed due to steel and concrete replacing the need for cohesive construction, although this contention is peculiar given these materials had been widely used since the founding of the Guastavino’s company.
The Biltmore and Rhododendron Estates
While constructing the grandest estate in America, George Vanderbilt wanted the very best architects to work on the design of his Biltmore House. Vanderbilt summoned the Spanish native to Asheville to work on his home in 1891.
According to the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources, “There Guastavino designed and supervised vaulted ceiling finishes in the Biltmore House porte cochere, entry vestibule, winter garden, loggia, basement rooms and corridors, and Gate House.” He also famously designed the tiled indoor pool inside the home.
After a few years of work on the Biltmore House, Guastavino took a liking to the WNC environment, beginning to buy up land in Buncombe and McDowell counties in 1894.
Accounts differ on how much land Guastavino amassed in Black Mountain, somewhere between 600-1000 acres.
Guastavino’s vast land holdings would come to be known as the Rhododendron Estate.
In a marked departure from his work building fireproof ceilings, his home in Black Mountain, known colloquially as the Spanish Castle, was primarily constructed of wood.
The 25-room mansion included rooms for each of Guastavino’s interests outside of work. Since he was a devout Roman Catholic, a chapel was constructed. Nearby the chapel was a music room for the many instruments he loved to play. Downstairs there was a billiards room for entertaining guests and on the third floor a bell tower tolling each hour.
On the grounds, Guastavino planted a vineyard to make wine and kilns to fire tiles for his company. He built terraces, gardens and ponds to dot the landscape. Roads he plotted drove through cornfields and orchards with barns to sustain them.
“Guastavino sculpted the place as though it were his own Biltmore Estate,” wrote Jon Elliston for WNC Magazine.
The Basilica of St. Lawrence
Fittingly, the devout Roman Catholic’s final project was a church.
As explained by Anne Chesky, “By 1903, Guastavino, now semi-retired, began working on his passion project – a Catholic Church designed around a large, free-span elliptical dome. He financed most of the Asheville-based project himself and provided much of the tile, which had been fired in kilns at Rhododendron.”
Designed by Guastavino and Richard Sharp Smith, an English architect who also worked on Biltmore, the church was styled after the Spanish Baroque Revival.
Work on the church began in 1905. Guastavino would never see it to completion.
Rafael Guastavino died on Feb. 2, 1908, at age 65, in his home in Black Mountain. According to the New York Times’ obituary for Guastavino in the newspaper on Feb. 3, 1908, “the architect of New York” died after contracting a cold “while on a trip to Boston three weeks ago.”
Guastavino’s son took up the mantle of both the church project, which was nearly complete, and his late father’s company.
Dedicated in 1909, St. Lawrence’s Church in Asheville boasts the largest elliptical-shaped dome in North America.
After the church’s completion, the Spanish architect who made it possible was entombed in a crypt to the left of the altar.
St. Lawrence’s gained the distinction of basilica in 1993.
Guastavino’s Legacy
After the death of her husband, Francesca became a recluse. Rafael Guastavino IV said, according to the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center, “At the time of his death she had the big clock in the tower above the house stopped. She would never allow it to run again; it was a symbol that, for her, time had stopped.”
From then on, Francesca was known to only wear black.
For a quarter century, she lived in a self-imposed exile on the outskirts of Black Mountain before the fire.
According to WNC Magazine, “An oil fire destroyed part of the house and badly burned her. She spent the last three years of her life at a rest home in Asheville before passing away in 1946.” Francesca Ramirez Guastavino was buried in Asheville’s Riverside Cemetery.
By 1950, the Spanish Castle was gone, having been neglected since Rafael’s death and badly damaged by the fire.
The United Church of Christ acquired the Rhododendron Estate in 1948, transforming the property into Christmount Christian Assembly, a retreat center that remains open today. The retreat center’s staff offers tours of the ruins of the Spanish Castle. Today, little remains other than the wine cellar which features one of Guastavino’s vaults and a chimney for one of the tile firing kilns.
On Jul. 13, 1989, the Rhododendron Estate was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
While Guastavino’s patents expired over a century ago, few have sought to borrow his architectural insight, so few that the technology is nearly as lost as Greek fire and Roman concrete. A combined team of members from the International Masonry Institute professionals and several MIT students had so little information to work with when recreating the arches for an art installation for the National Building Museum that they were forced to guess how to reconstruct it for an art installation around a decade ago.
Since 2024, the Swannanoa Valley Museum and History Center has hosted the Guastavino Alliance, a compendium of owners of the surviving Guastavino vaults around the country. As of Dec. 2024, 49 of the remaining 600 remaining buildings had been inducted.
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