Symbolic Maresme buildings (III)

La Massa theater, a Maresme pride

139 years ago, On March 13, 1881, the La Massa theater was inaugurated in Vilassar de Dalt with “The flower of the stepmother”. The building of this theater is one of the last works of the Valencian architect Rafael Guastavino i Moreno, built in Catalonia before traveling to the United States, where he died in 1908 and where he  built in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia or Washington. In fact, the Vilassar de Dalt building was inaugurated when Guastavino had already left for the United States.

The building of the La Massa theater stands out for its huge brick dome that covers the armchair patio. This amazing dome is 17 meters in diameter by 3.5 meters of arrow, and a central oculus of 4 meters in diameter. This kind of building, patented by Guastavino, with the name of Guastavino System, was known until then as “seen brick turn”, and was an architecture traditional in Catalonia and Valencia. This system in the United States made by Guastavino was famous and for that reason he build a large number of buildings.

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Precisely to be known, in 1883 Guastavino acquired a plot in Connecticut. In it town he built two houses through his technique and set them on fire (this was a great concern at the time). He photographed the entire process to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. Really an original, effective and amazing method of promotion.

Meanwhile, in Vilassar de Dalt (Maresme), his building housed one of the main social and cultural centers of the town. Over the years the building deteriorated and restoration work began in 1988. These works were abandoned in 1991 and the theater was disused until 1999, when the restoration was restarted with a project by the architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Lluís Dilmé and Xavier Fabré. Finally the theater La Massa de Vilassar de Dalt reopened in April 2002.

Since then La Massa offers a constant theater, shows, concerts…program.

The fact that in the middle of Maresme there is a theater of this category signed by Rafael Guastavino is a source of pride for the inhabitants of Vilassar de Dalt.