![Raphael Guastavino, the Spanish architect best known for his tiling work at the Biltmore Estate, built what became locally known as the](https://www.citizen-times.com/gcdn/-mm-/c0ca9bf4b46d0aa4cc4adfee692ed1042f3da6ac/c=0-3-2760-1555/local/-/media/2017/06/07/BlackMountainNews/B9327870544Z.1_20170607144153_000_GASIIKDAP.1-0.jpg?width=660&height=372&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp)
“At the moment her husband died, Frances Guastavino stopped the great clock in the bell tower of the great house and for almost 40 years the great hands indicated the time of (Rafael) Guastavino’s death, a few minutes before eight hours,” Maggie Lauterer wrote in a June 1986 issue of the Asheville Citizen-Times.
The article, “Remembering Guastavino”, looked into the private life of world-renowned builder Rafael Guastavino, who revived a Catalan masonry technique of layering thin tiles to produce lightweight, fireproof, self-supporting arches, which can be seen in some of America’s most famous landmarks, including the Boston Public Library, Grand Central Terminal, Grant’s Tomb, Ellis Island Great Hall, Carnegie Hall, the Smithsonian, the United States Supreme Court, the Biltmore House and the Basilica of St. Lawrence in Asheville.
Lauterer collected numerous stories about the builder and his second wife, Francesca, who lived in the Asheville area beginning in 1894. Lauterer focused his article on the couple “who loved each other like lovers in novels.” Although to some this romance may seem unrelated to Rafael’s extensive architectural achievements, it is very possible that Guastavino and his innovative tiling techniques would never have arrived in Asheville – or even in this country – if not for the tumultuous private life of the constructor.
Guastavino was born in 1842 in Valencia, Spain. As a teenager, he moved to Barcelona to study architecture. There, Rafael lived with his uncle and aunt and their adopted daughter, Pilar. Shortly after 17-year-old Rafael arrived, 16-year-old Pilar became pregnant. The couple married immediately and their first son, José, was born in 1860. Two other sons followed shortly after: Ramon in 1861 and Manuel in 1863.
After obtaining the title of “master builder”, Guastavino, with the help of his family connections, was awarded a large-scale order: the largest textile factory in Barcelona; its impressive and effective design launched his career in Spain.
Things at home weren’t going so well. Rafael had started a relationship with his sons’ nanny, Paulina Roig. After learning of this affair – which apparently was not the first – Pilar left Rafael and took the children. While some accounts indicate that the couple reconciled in 1871 long enough to conceive a fourth son, Rafael Guastavino Jr., recently discovered family letters indicate that Rafael Jr.’s mother was not Pilar, but the nanny , Paulina. Paulina soon moved in with Rafael and their son, taking on the title “housekeeper” in official records.
This could therefore explain why Rafael only took his youngest son with him to New York in April 1881 and why Paulina traveled with them. (A few months earlier, Pilar and her three sons had immigrated to Argentina so the boys could avoid Spanish conscription.)
These same family letters also indicated that Rafael’s immigration to the United States was motivated, or at least financed, by something perhaps even more sensational than his extramarital affairs. Apparently, through a promissory note scam, Guastavino had pocketed $40,000 (equivalent to about $400,000 today) to start over in New York.
Guastavino had difficulty obtaining orders in the United States. Yet in 1889, he and his son founded the Guastavino Fire Proof Construction Company. And, keeping in mind the flammability of rare books and archival collections, the firm of McKim, Mead and White awarded Guastavino’s firm its first major contract: seven vaulted ceilings in the Boston Public Library . The success of this order would lead to tile construction projects across the United States for the father-son duo.
At home, things continued to be difficult with the women in Rafael’s life. It is unclear how long Rafael and Paulina’s relationship lasted once they arrived in America, but – after opening an office in Boston – he was romantically involved with at least one local woman. Then, while commuting between Boston and New York for work, he fell in love with Francesca Ramirez. Francesca was significantly younger than Rafael and – because Rafael was still legally married and a devout Catholic – identified herself as his daughter when she moved into the New York townhouse he shared with his son. This proved a difficult charade to maintain.
At the same time, Guastavino’s professional reputation for its beautiful, relatively inexpensive and high-quality tiled vaults grew. In the early 1890s, he had been commissioned to install tile in George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore home in Asheville. Guastavino soon decided to move to the mountains of North Carolina, where he was able to build his own estate near the North Carolina clays used in much of his work.
And moving to North Carolina solved another problem; He and Francesca could stop pretending to be father and daughter.
In 1894, Rafael – apparently separated from his three eldest sons – placed advertisements in South American newspapers attempting to locate Pilar and confirm whether his wife was still alive. Without any news, Rafael, 51, married Francesca, 33, on September 12, 1894. (The following year, in the Argentine national census, Pilar, now 56 and still using the surname Guastavino , said she had been married for 36 years and had four children.)
With his new wife, Guastavino built a large house on property he purchased in Black Mountain. Known as Rhododendron, Guastavino’s estate was far from typical – neither for him nor for the Black Mountain region. Although known for his fireproof tiles, Guastavino built his house from wood. The rambling, three-story, whitewashed house contained 25 rooms, including a billiard room, a bell tower and a chapel.
It was in this chapel that Francesca and Rafael, as Maggie Lauterer wrote in 1986, “knelt time and again during their years together…reaffirming their marriage vows.”
In 1903, Guastavino, now semi-retired, began work on his passion project: a Catholic church designed around a large clear-span elliptical dome. He financed most of the Asheville-based project himself and supplied many of the tiles, which had been fired in Rhododendron kilns.
As construction of the church neared completion, Rafael fell ill and never recovered, dying on February 1, 1908. Francesca was devastated. The widow, once a socialite who threw lavish dinner parties at Rhododendron, has become a recluse, always dressed in black.
“Her beloved husband having left, the señora remained alone in the Spanish castle,” wrote Lauterer in concluding the Guastavino love story. “It is said that she placed a plate on her deceased husband’s chair each evening for the evening meal, sometimes telling a servant that her husband might return one day.”
Rafael Guastavino Jr. oversaw the remaining details of his father’s church, including the installation of an interior vault where the elder Guastavino was buried. The church, today the Basilica of Saint-Laurent, was designated a basilica in 1993.
Although Francesca remained in the Rhododendron House until a few years before her death in 1946, it quickly fell into disrepair. All that remains of the Guastavino home is a brick foundation adjacent to an underground wine cellar – the only part of the house built using Guastavino’s famous vaulting techniques.
The questions therefore remain: Would Rafael Guastavino have come to the United States without his infidelity? Would he still have settled in Asheville after completing work on the Biltmore estate, if not for his desire to leave behind a town that only knew the love of his life as a girl? What would America’s great public places, with their tiled domes and arches, look like if Rafael Guastavino’s first wife had never left?
Anne Chesky is executive director of the new Asheville History Museum, which will open the exhibit “Palaces for the People: Guastavino and America’s Great Public Places” at the end of October.