Technology Highlights

Guastavino Tile Ceilings, Domes and Vaults

As part of its work inspecting and documenting historic buildings, Vertical Access (VA) has been involved with several projects investigating original Guastavino tile ceilings, vaults and domes. Notable buildings with Guastavino tile surveyed by VA in New York City include Cram and Goodhue's St. Thomas Church and Bertram Goodhue's St. Bartholomew's Church, St. Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, the Battery Maritime Building and the Federal Reserve Bank. Outside of New York City, VA has performed survey work on All Saints Cathedral in Albany, NY, designed by Robert W. Gibson, and Cram, Goodhue and Ferguson's Cadet Chapel at the United States Military Academy.



The Oyster Bar, New York, NY

Building on this project experienc e, VA employees have undertaken research into Guastavino tile assemblies and presented their findings in a variety of venues. Kent Diebolt, Vertical Access Founder and President, was the grant writer and chair of the program planning committee for a one-day symposium entitled "Preserving Historic Guastavino Tile Ceilings, Domes and Vaults" held at Columbia University in February 1999. Kent oversaw the publication of the papers presented in the symposium as well as the 24 United States patents held by the Rafael Guastavino and his son, Rafael Jr. as a special issue of the APT Bulletin (Volume XXX, No. 4, 1999). In December 2004, Kent gave a talk in Barcelona, Spain on the preservation of Guastavino tile structures and will be returning to Barcelona in December 2006 to continue this dialog.



St. Thomas Church, New York, NY

Kelly Streeter, a licensed structural engineer with VA, has undertaken a testing and research program to evaluate the acoustic properties of Guastavino tiles and the use of non-destructive evaluation of Guastavino tile as an assessment tool. As part of this research, she has conducted two pilot studies to measure pulse velocity and frequency responses at Guastavino vaults in New York City's St. Thomas Church and Battery Maritime Building for the purposes of determining the feasibility of using ultrasonic rrequency response for the evaluation of Guastavino tile structures. Building on these pilot studies, Kelly's current research involves the construction of full-scale mock-ups of Guastavino vaults for the investigation of non-destructive evaluation techniques in a controlled environment.



Frequency plot analysis of Guastavino vaults

For more information see all VA projects with Guastavino tile.