Antoni Gaudi, Part 1

You probably know Gaudi's work, even if you don't recognize his name. His distinctive architecture is featured throughout Barcelona. But his life started humbly, as the son of a Reus coppersmith.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
only cry I'm Tracy Wilson. Uh So, every once in
a while, I'm sure this happens to Tracy too, but

(00:21):
in this case, it's happened to me. A potential topic
we'll just sort of keep putting itself in front of
my field of vision, and today is one of those.
It's a topic that came up randomly in a discussion
with my husband one night, and then the next morning
we had a listener mail request for it from our
listener Rachel. And then a day or two later, uh we,

(00:41):
my husband and I were watching a making of short
film about the design influences in the Disney movie Rerecord Ralph,
and it came up, and then one of my friends
off handedly mentioned it as well. And so at that
point I felt like, I we clearly need to talk
about this topic because otherwise it's just going to keep
poking itself into my life. I don't really leave in
you know, fate, etcetera. But you know, Universe, if you're

(01:04):
trying to send me a message, I got it. So
we're going to talk about an architect who is pretty
well known. His work is left an indelible mark, particularly
on the city of Barcelona, and then as Antony Goudy,
and I can tell you right out of the gate,
this is going to be one of the best episodes
for us in terms of Pinterest content of all time,
because there's so many beautiful pictures of his work. And

(01:25):
if you think that you do not know Goudy's work,
I would actually bet that you do, even if you
do not recognize his name, or in the case of
a lot of people, they recognize his name and they
know he was an architect, and they even know maybe
some of the buildings that he worked on, but they
don't kind of know the whole story there. Uh. His work,
which is part of the Catalan modernist movement, is incredibly

(01:47):
eye catching. It's really creative. It's unlike almost any other
architecture you will ever see. It often shows up in
lists that will appear online of like crazy buildings made
in history that you know, they look super ultra modern,
like they were crafted, you know, in very recent history,
and in fact they're quite old. Uh. He built residences,

(02:07):
he built public spaces, he built places of worship and
all of them are really really incredibly breathtaking. And so
for just a little bit of background, the Modern East
movement or Modernism if you just wanna do the slouchy version,
ran from around eighteen eighty to World War One, and
it developed in tandem with the naturalism movement and the

(02:28):
Arts and crafts movement and aesthetic as well as Art nouveau,
and so you'll see hints of all of those echoed
throughout it. And it combines the ideas of traditionalism with
the usage of modern technique and really modern materials. So
that's the setup for talking about Anthony Goudy born on

(02:49):
June fifty two and Tony Placid Guiam Goudy Cornet was
the fifth child of Francesk Goudy Sarah and Antonia Cornett
our Trend. The father, France ESQ, was a copper smith
and Gowdy's mother was also from a copper smithing family.
Gouty would later on say in his life that his
ability to perceive space and to think three dimensionally came

(03:13):
from watching his family members at work. Yeah, you know,
watching them sort of build these various metal pieces really
gave him a sense of how things go together, and
his family tree actually traces back to the south of France,
so one of his fraternal ancestors settled in re Use
in Catalonia, Spain in sixty five, so they were there

(03:36):
for quite some time before he was born. Goude's actual
place of birth is kind of debatable. Some biographies say
that he was born in Horeyou, Spain, and others say
that he was born in his family's country home, which
was in between that city and Radon. But we do
know for sure is that he was baptized the next
day in Race at the Church of St. Peter the Apostle. Yeah,

(03:59):
I'm part of theason that there is a little bit
of debate over his birthplace has to do with the
fact that he is really a very beloved figure and
I think everybody would like to claim him as a
son of their city. Um. As a child, he was
actually plagued by health issues. He had a rheumatic issue
that limited his mobility and that meant his interactions with

(04:19):
other children were also quite limited. He had to ride
on a donkey to get around and walking was really
too painful for him to manage much of it. And
it's likely if you look at it through the lens
of modern medicine that he had juvenile idiopathic arthritis, also
known as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which is an autoimmune disease
which can cause damage to tissues and severe inflammation of

(04:42):
the joints and a really great deal of pain. The
arthritic condition, which held Goudy back socially left him lots
of time to himself, and this is often credited is
the reason that he developed this incredible set of observation skills.
As a boy basically sidelined by a physical problem, he
just watched the world around him and really focused on

(05:03):
drawing and observing nature. And while his school attendance was
spotty because of his medical condition, Goudy did enroll as
a student. He first started at a rooftop preschool near
his home, and then at the age of eleven, he
entered a school which was housed in an old convent,
and he kind of started to do pretty well in
his studies, particularly in geometry. He did really, really well,

(05:26):
which is not a surprise since he talked about his
sort of innate ability to perceive spatial relations and he
wasn't really a star student, but if you look at
his school records, there's a clear upward trajectory in his grades.
Over the course of his studies. He kind of got
better and better as he went. As he matured, he
seemed to improve physically enough that mobility was not as

(05:49):
much of a challenge for him. He eventually turned to
a vegetarian lifestyle as a way to help manage his health,
and he adopted the habit of taking long, regular walks
and during his time at the Escalapian School, which is
that school he attended. Later he really started dabbling in design,
so he started illustrating the school news letter, which is

(06:11):
called que and he also started working the schools theater
department doing set designed for them. He also, at one
point in his his sort of high school years, hatched
the scheme that he was going to restore the ruined
monastery of Publet, which he did not do, but that
project was undertaken in the twentieth century by another group. Eventually,

(06:32):
Goudy was deeply religious as an adult, and some believe
that this commitment to his faith really started at school. Then.
The architect himself even said as much, crediting his time
there uh as the point where he realized the value
of divinity and religious history and the potential for salvation
through Christ. Yeah, it's interesting reading different accounts of his

(06:54):
life in preparation for this. Some say he really wasn't
very religious as a kid. Others say he was um.
He seems to have not exhibited a particular fervor of
religiosity at that age, but according to him, it was
still going on in his head. He was still thinking
about all of those things. So before we get to

(07:15):
the next phase of his education or he moves away, Uh,
do you want to take a quick word from a sponsor,
Let's do stupendous So jumping back to the life of
Antony Goudy. Uh. After he finished secondary school, he decided
that he really did want to seriously study architecture, and
so he traveled to Barcelona in eighteen sixty nine, where

(07:37):
he first attended the Provincial School of Architecture and then
the College of Science in order to fulfill a series
of needed prerequisites before he could move on to the
advanced architectural school. And when he moved to Barcelona, his
brother accompanied him. His brother was studying to be a doctor.
His performance in these preparatory courses was a lot like
it had been in his school record. In his younger years,

(07:59):
he missed a lot of classes, spending his time in
the library instead, which I can empathize with that. His
grades were okay, but he had an occasional spike on
specific subjects. Clearly he had skill and talent, but maybe
not always focus. Nonetheless, he did eventually move on to

(08:21):
the Upper Technical School of Architecture, and in addition to
his architecture courses, he also opted to take classes in
subjects like philosophy and history and art. And he came
from the mindset that understanding the social and political aspects
of any culture was key to understanding that culture's architecture.
In line with that approach to things, he'd sometimes draw

(08:43):
an atmospheric elements before any actual architectural design on his assignments.
There's one story that when he was tasked with designing
a cemetery, first he drew a hearse and mourners to
set the scene. He often left teachers scratching their heads
as to whether he was a genius or kind of deranged. Yeah,
there's one quote that I saw at some point, and

(09:05):
I didn't include it verbatim. That um when he finally
received his diploma that they had written something to the
effect of, you know, you're either the greatest genius of
our age or a madman. I think that's kind of
how he was generally perceived. He was definitely outside of
the box even as a student. And in eighteen seventy

(09:26):
eight he was finally recommended by the director of the
Upper Technical School of Architecture to be officially given the
title of architect and to graduate. And apparently Goudy already
considered himself an architect, and he told his friend Laurenc
Moatemala that he had in fact been an architect for years. Now.
This might sound like jerkery, and Goudy was, by all

(09:49):
accounts pretty pompous. He also had a temper, but in
truth he had been working for builders in Barcelona for
years in order to finance his education. From eighteen se
many three to eighteen seventy seven, he was often collaborating
on commissions with his teachers, and I find that sort
of fascinating. I didn't find a lot about how common

(10:10):
that was, but it seemed interesting to me that a
lot of his professors and his teachers were kind of like,
we don't know what to make of you. But we
would like to work with you even though you are
still a student. It seems like a kind of fascinating situation. Um.
And in eighteen seventy five he served as a draftsman
for master builder Joseph Fon. He worked on Barcelona's Cutadella

(10:34):
Park under Falsair, and he would continue to work with
the master builder well into the eighteen eighties after he
had set up his own firm. Starting in eighteen seventy six,
he collaborated with his professor Leandre Sarla Chimas. Their work
together included designs for a never built Villa Arcadia. In
eighteen seventy six, gut He also worked with the company

(10:55):
that developed and built Barcelona's tramway, and then he collaborated
as a draftsman with his professor H. Francisco de Paola
de Vilar Elzano on the monastery at Montserrats. Even so,
he wasn't officially an architect until the title had actually
been bestowed upon him, which it was. He immediately had

(11:15):
fancy cards made up that said, so I kind of
love that, but before we talk about, uh, the next phase,
we're gonna kind of backtrack. There's some overlap in the
timeline here, we're gonna talk about his military enlistment in
the first years of his professional career, but before we
do that, let's do another quick sponsor break. So even

(11:36):
before he was formally recognized as an architect, uh Gaudy
was actually also serving in the military, and this was
compulsory for Spain's young men at the time, and in fact,
military service was compulsory in Spain until pretty recently, like
in the two thousands. He enlisted in eighteen seventy four
and he was assigned to the Barcelona Infantry so the

(11:58):
Third Carlist War was underway while he was enlisted. He
never saw any kind of combat because of his medical conditions.
He did serve as a military administration assistant in the
last year of his three years of service, and because
of his medical leaves so he did still have arthritis,
even though it was not as debilitating in terms of
his mobility as it had been when he was a
child UH and he was able to kind of sit

(12:20):
out a lot of normal military service activities. He was
also able to continue with his studies throughout his entire
enlistment in the military. In the previous segment, we mentioned
several of the project's Gouty was able to work on
while he was in school, and eighteen seventy six was
a particularly busy year. However, it was also a year

(12:40):
of great personal loss. In July of that year, his
brother Franchise, died suddenly, and in September he also lost
his mother. After Antonia's death, Gouty's father closed his business
and he moved to Barcelonas to be with his son. Yeah,
their family history is actually quite tragic. Even though Gouty
was the youngest, he had two of his siblings died

(13:02):
as children, and his other two siblings died fairly young.
The other woman mentioned a little bit later, but so
at this point this was really all that they had
left of their family. Uh and one school was over
for Antoni, though, he really shifted into his professional life,
and he did so in style. We already mentioned that
he had fancy cards drawn up almost immediately. He established

(13:24):
his own architectural firm immediately after being granted the title,
and he became something of a dandy. He was always
extremely fashionable. He moved in society circles. He was always
impeccably groomed. He was kind of enjoying the life of
a young professional. Though his star was on the rise,
Goudy retained a strong connection to the working class. One

(13:46):
of his first large scale projects was a workers housing
project that was intended to improve the quality of life
where its inhabitants. It was called the Cooperativa Mats Harrons.
He was also commissioned early on in this first year
by the city of Barcelona to design lamp posts. These
were prototypes for gas lights, which were intended to light

(14:08):
the city's highway. Gouty's vision for the co op was
pretty ambitious. It featured a small two bedroom home for
each worker, as well as leisure and cultural areas. Only
one of the homes in a small section of the
factory made it to actual completion at the time, though
the social club he had designed for the co op
never broke ground. While his grandest plans for the co

(14:31):
op weren't fully realized, he continued to work on projects
for many years. Yeah he the co Operativa Matanan stayed
pretty near and dear to his heart. He worked on
a lot of stuff for them for a long time,
and he also presented the plans that he had made
for the co op project at the Paris World's Fair
in eighty eight, and this work got a great deal

(14:52):
of attention, and it really put Gouty on the map.
Also on exhibit at the World's Fair that year was
a display that he had designed for a glove show
op So he kind of had two different styles of things.
One was his grand design scheme and one was this
sort of cool display that he had put together. And
Gouty's work that he did and that was on display
there at the World's Fair really piqued the interest of

(15:14):
Catalan entrepreneur and industrialist, you said Guel Ibasi Gallupi, And
after being introduced at the fair, the two men became
lifelong friends. Guel would also be one of Gouty's most
lucrative clients and eventually his main patron. In a stroke
of good fortune for Gouty, Guel seemed really unconcerned with
the expense of supporting such a creative mind's efforts. At

(15:37):
one point, while working on a home for Guel, the
cost had kind of startled the project's bookkeeper to the
point that he thought he should probably intervene. He showed
this massive growing pile of bills to Guel, hoping to
stop the money out blue. But Guella said to have
looked at the papers and said, is that all he spent? Yeah,

(15:58):
he was pretty forgiving of this kind of you know,
extravagant tastes, and I mean it was paying off. He
made really beautiful things, no problem. Uh. And in the
late nineteenth century, as all of this was happening, Barcelona
was really in love with art and intellectualism, and it
was also experiencing a huge financial boon thanks to a
very busy and successful textile industry, and in fact, that

(16:22):
co op that Gaudi had been working on was intended
largely to house textile industry workers. This prosperous economy and
the hunger on the part of the bourgeoisie to be
seen with artists and famous people really turned into the
perfect environment for this young architect. And before we get

(16:42):
into all of the sort of exciting things that happened
and some of the huge projects he ended up taking
on as a result of his growing esteem, Uh, we
are going to end part one, so you'll have to
wait for the second part on this one. Do you
have some listener mail before we take our break. I
do have a listener mail. This is from our listener.
I think her name is pronounced Sherry, but it's an

(17:04):
alternate spelling, so I apologize if that's a mispronunciation, and
she writes, Hi, Tracy and Holly, I wanted to thank
you for your recent podcast on the eggnog riot at
West Point. I had never heard the story, but found
it depressingly unsurprising as a tale of young men and alcohol. Afterwards,
I double checked our family history and yes, my husband's
great times three grandfather was a freshman there that year,

(17:26):
although he was not among the nineteen named. I found
this a little amusing because his family was already a
bit skeptical about his choice to attend. They were a passionate,
strict New England clergy family, more focused on souls and
salvation than military matters. A couple of excerpts from letters
between his father and grandmother earlier that year illustrate this
there below. There's no mention in the letters that I

(17:48):
can find or elsewhere of their reaction to the riot,
but I don't imagine that it was a pleased one.
And so she includes this letter from uh William Patton,
father of George, to William's there Ruth Weelock Patton and
this is UH on January six, and he writes, I
am not yet convinced that it was best for G
to be fixed at West Point, to be qualified chiefly

(18:11):
for the army. It does not accord with my views
or wishes. He has, however, made application of himself and
procured many letters of recommendation. If he should receive permission
to go, it may be well for me to acquiesce,
though I have done nothing to promote the object. And
then Ruth's response to him UH two months later is
I hope our dear G will be prospered, though his

(18:32):
call seems to be out of our line. I'm informed
their religious privileges are good at West Point, and they
have a worthy chaplain. Your son will have the same
God to protect him as he has here, and perhaps
as good associates. I hope the young gentleman who are
to accompany him have good characters, and that a blessing
may attend them. I love that letter exchange so much.

(18:52):
It's so sweet. UH. And apparently George went on to
have a successful thirty four year career in the army,
so it go well for him, uh and shure. He
goes on to write mostly unrelated. Ruth Weelock Patton ran
a school with her daughters and another son in Hartford.
The female students learned embroidery along with other subjects, and

(19:13):
you can see examples if you do a Google image
search on Mrs Patten's school. The subject has been explored
by Susan P. Shul. We're in Connecticut Needle Work Women
Are and Family seventy eighteen forty and with Needle and
Brush Schoolgirl Embroidery from the Connecticut River Valley seventeen forty
to eighteen forty. I totally want to read those books.
By the way, I have not gotten to yet. She says,

(19:35):
should wear makes some interesting observations on needle work styles
traced through maternal lines and relationships among women in different families.
Thank you for your work, best wishes for a happy
New Year. That is such a cool letter. I love
that she was able to give us that exchange because,
as I said, it's so charming. I love that the
grandmother's like, look, he's gonna be who he is. Just

(19:55):
hope for him to have blessings. I think it's so sweet.
I love it. Uh, if you would like to write
to us, you can do so we are at history
podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can also
touch base with us on Twitter at mist in History
at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History, and on
Tumbler at mist in History dot tumbler dot com. We
are also on pinterest dot com slash miss in history

(20:17):
and as I said, I'm going to have a heyday
with Goudy work on contrist once these episodes their UH.
If you would like to purchase missed in History goodies,
you can do so missed in History dot spreadshirt dot com,
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other things to delight and where in Uh. If you'd

(20:38):
like to learn a little bit more about what we've
talked about today, you can go to our parents site,
how stuff works dot com. Type in the name Goudy
in the search bar and that's g A U d
I and you will get an article called ten most
famous architects who ever lived. He really is quite well
known to many people, although I'm often shocked when I
mentioned him and people give me a blank stare. UH.

(20:59):
If you would like to visit us at our home,
you can do that at missed in history dot com.
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(21:20):
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