Vida de Guastavino y Guastavino

In 1881, without speaking a word of English and with forty thousand dollars from a securities scam, the Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino traveled to New York with the intention of patenting the medieval technique of the partitioned vault there. But that eventful journey -culminating in his participation in such iconic buildings as Grand Central Station, Saint John the Divine Cathedral or the Queensboro Bridge- is more than the umpteenth version of the cliché of the "American dream." Guastavino is the palpable demonstration of the extent to which a national architectural identity can be born in a completely random and unexpected way.