Quote:
Originally Posted by geomorph
Nice shot of this nice dome!
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That's the work of Rafael Guastavino, and if you ever take a look at the brick and tile work in Grand Central Station, it will look awfully familiar... Guastavino did that too. He was brought to Asheville to work on George Vanderbilt's Biltmore Estate. Guastavino is actually buried in this church. If you look to the left of the picture, up toward the front of the church by the American flag, that's where you'll find Guastavino's crypt. There's actually a (terrible) horror novel written by a local author, where a central plot point is to retrieve a key (or something -- I can't remember and the book is so bad I refuse to read it again) hidden with Guastavino's mummy. In the process of retrieving the key, the hero manages to chip off most of what remains of Guastavino's face, including his luxuriant, if dusty, mustache.
Meanwhile, that crucifix up at the front was purchased from a Spanish cathedral and dates from the 1600's. To the left in the Chapel of St. Mary there is a marble altarpiece dating from the 1300's and a painting from the 1700's, and in the right in the Chapel of St. Joseph there is a lantern only to be lit if the Pope ever deigns to pay a call, plus an historic stained glass window that was saved from a much older, and one of the only in the South, African-American Catholic church here in town.