Arts & Culture
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Spanish “master of the arch” Raphael Guastavino brought a soaring elegance to American architecture by artfully using layers of thin clay tiles to build vaults, domes, and roofs in more than a thousand buildings. In 1890, he joined the architectural team at Biltmore Estate and eventually imagineered his own estate, called “Rhododendron,” in Black Mountain. Of the Basilica of St. Lawrence and its free-standing elliptical dome, the largest in North America, Guastavino said the construction proceeded with “the care of a father for a child.” On October 16, 1909, The Asheville Citizen reported that “Mr. Guastavino began laying these tile exactly as if he were shingling an imaginary dome in space, using only cement for nails.”
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Asheville, North Carolina · United States
