Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Goddess, Heroine, Beast: Anna Hyatt Huntington's New York Sculpture, 1902-1936 Multiple Occupancy Common Love, Aesthetics of Becoming Social Forces Visualized: Photography and Scientific Charity, 1900-1920 Edward Koren: The Capricious Line Pictures for Books: Photographs by Thomas Roma Modernism and Iraq The New Acropolis Museum Treasures Rediscovered: Chinese Stone Sculpture from the Sackler Collections at Columbia University Revolutions: A Century of Makonde Masquerade in Mozambique Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York Architecture in Print: Design and Debate in the Soviet Union 1919–1935, Selections from the Collection of Stephen Garmey Guide to Phlamoudhi "Please, teach me..." Rainer Ganahl and the Politics of Learning Restoring Byzantium: The Kariye Camii in Istanbul & the Byzantine Institute Restoration The Troubled Search: The Work of Max Abramovitz Moscow: City, Spectacle, Capital of Photography Reflection: Seven Years in Print—The LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies Jean Fautrier, 1898–1964 Paris as Gameboard: Man Ray's Atgets Arte Povera: Selections from the Sonnabend Collection Architect of Dreams: The Theatrical Vision of Joseph Urban Percival Goodman: Architect, Planner, Teacher, Painter Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and Robert Watts—Events, Objects, Documents Brushed Voices: Calligraphy in Contemporary China Mastering McKim's Plan: Columbia's First Century on Morningside Heights Robert Motherwell on Paper Apostles in England: Sir James Thornhill and the Legacy of Raphael's Tapestry Cartoons The Old World Builds the New: The Guastavino Company and the Technology of the Catalan Vault, 1885–1962 The Post-Pre-Raphaelite Print: Etching, Illustration, Reproductive Engraving, & Photography in England in and around the 1860s Unfaded Pageant: Edwin Austin Abbey's Shakespearean Subjects Robert Smithson Unearthed: Drawings, Collages, Writings Victorian Pleasures: American Board and Table Games of the Nineteenth Century from the Liman Collection Impossible Picturesqueness Sexual Difference: Both Sides of the Camera
The Old World Builds the New: The Guastavino Company and the Technology of the Catalan Vault, 1885-1962

The Old World Builds the New
The Guastavino Company and the Technology of the Catalan Vault, 1885–1962

Janet Parks and Alan G. Neumann, AIA
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library and Wallach Art Gallery, 1996
8 1/2 x 11", 99 pp., 61 b&w illus.
ISBN 1884919030
ISBN 978-1884919039, Paper, $26

The Guastavino Fireproof Construction Company was the major architectural innovator whose work is in more than 1,000 buildings in North America, was founded in 1889 by an emigré architect from Barcelona named Rafael Guastavino. He along with his son, also named Rafael, was responsible for many of the most distinctive features of American buildings constructed during the course of the company's history.

Born in Valencia in 1842, Rafael Guastavino had an established career as an architect in Barcelona during its great urban expansion, which began in the 1860s. He had pioneered the adaptation of a centuries–old building technology called the boveda catalane, or Catalan vault, a fireproof method of construction in which courses of tile are laminated with mortar.

The Guastavino Company designed and manufactured tile for the construction of vaults, staircases, domes, arches, and other architectural elements. Because the company served as a contractor on these projects, the Guastavino name today is not known to a wide audience, although the company worked primarily on large public buildings.

Guastavino's arrival in New York coincided with two architectural trends: the beginning of the grand Beaux Arts-inspired American Renaissance architecture and the early development of steel, portland cement, and concrete as architectural materials. The Guastavino's client list reads like an architectural Who's Who: McKim, Mead, and White; Bertram Goodhue; Ralph Adams Cram; Henry Hornbostel; Carrère and Hastings; Warren and Wetmore; among many others.