The unknown shutter

La Pedrera conceals secrets hidden for almost 100 years: the unpublished shutter

Above each doorway in the building there is an access panel, from which a metal element protrudes. This element corresponded to a corrugated metal shutter. On both sides, the shutter guides and the mechanisms used to operate it are still preserved. Due to the type of shutter—without any particular artistic finish—it was long believed to be an intervention carried out after Gaudí’s time. However, we can now demonstrate that, although such shutters were more commonly used in industrial and commercial premises, their installation can be dated to around 1910, as the photograph was published in 1911.

The first documented image of the shutter appears in plate no. 56 included in the Album d’architecture moderne à Barcelone: Collection de 70 planches. This album was published in Barcelona by the Parera publishing house in 1911 (Bibliothèque de Matériaux et Documents d'Art Espagnol). The edition was published in Spanish and French.

It is a phototype by Miquel Parera, the publisher, and the photograph is by Martinell (presumably César Martinell, the architect). The publication contains photographic illustrations of a representative selection of what were considered the finest modern buildings in Barcelona. The architects featured include Gaudí, Domènech i Montaner, Puig i Cadafalch, and Sagnier, among others.

The second image corresponds to a photograph by Lucien Roisin Besnard (L. Roisin) (Paris, 1884 – Barcelona, 1943), an industrial photographer, publisher, and owner of the Postales Roisin shop, which was very popular at the time.

In this photograph, the shutter can clearly be seen in the lowered position.

Postcard no. 42 from the L. Roisin postcard collection, which corresponds to the photograph shown, is published in Gaudí. Àlbum científic (Ed. Triangle Postals, Barcelona, 2004), where Juan José Lahuerta compiles, with scientific rigor, 135 postcards published during the period in which Gaudí was active. All of these postcards were used—written on and sent around the world. In reference to the shutter, the author notes: “The door grille and the grille of the balustrade opening of the tribune have not yet been installed.”

The third image showing the shutter is found illustrating the book Barcelone et les Grands Sanctuaires Catalans. This is a prestigious tourist guide to Catalonia, published in Paris by H. Laurens in 1913. The guide is richly illustrated, with 144 photographic engravings. Its author is Georges-Nicolas Desdevises du Dezért (1854–1942), a historian, novelist, poet, literary critic, and French Hispanist.

The book is part of a collection entitled Les Villes d’Art célèbres, which already comprised around fifty volumes at the time. Two volumes were devoted to Spanish cities: Córdoba and Granada, and Seville. The volume dedicated to Barcelona and Catalonia consists of twelve chapters and 172 pages. The cities, towns, and notable sites featured in the guide are Barcelona, Girona, Sant Joan de les Abadesses and Ripoll, Vic, Montserrat, Manresa, Lleida, Poblet, Santes Creus, Tarragona, and Tortosa.

With regard to La Pedrera, the guide includes two photographs. One is the same image found in the Album d’architecture moderne à Barcelone. The other shows the entire main façade and is credited to one of the most prolific and important postcard publishers of the time, Àngel Toldrà Viazo (Photo A. Toldrà Viazo).

Although in this context we are primarily interested in the photographic references, what the guide says about Casa Milà in 1910 is also noteworthy:

“But no one has taken the desired singularity of style as far as Mr. Gaudí, nor the determination for the unprecedented, proud and without possible reply. His latest creation in this genre seems to reach the very limits of what is monstrous. Imagine a rock carved by giants. In the raw stone itself, they have carved pillars, opened voids and galleries; not a single straight line, but rather gentle, floating curves, as if for these colossal forces granite were clay; then, as if to remind us that these Hercules know how, when necessary, to surprise as much with refinement as with strength, wrought-iron balconies, intricate like clumps of seaweed, pushed, dented, tangled, twisted and joyfully contorted, and stained with violent colours. And on the summit of the rock, a kind of daisy harvest: the white crests of a ceramic rooftop. –Do you like it?… Perhaps not, but it is his.” (pp. 71–72)