Casa dels Dracs: a locomotive among the dragons

The star sits above the door. It holds the center of a disc ringed with rivets, in a niche with a pointed roof; a headlamp crowns the disc, and two smaller circles flank it below. The Valencia College of Architects describes a winged locomotive on the house, a symbol of progress. The crest is that of the Compañía de Ferrocarriles del Norte.

The dragons have the rest of the façade. One has landed on the roof of the niche, right above the star: wings spread, a shield held tight against it, in front of a section of red brick. Another clings under a bracket, all white, its mouth half open, one wing raised. Its tail curls into a loop and ends in foliage. Higher up, a small creature climbs to the top of an arch edged with beading.

This bestiary has an author. José Manuel Cortina, a Valencian architect, drew the building in 1901, and his style has been given a name: “médiévalisme fantastique” (“fantastic medievalism”). He borrows from the Gothic, mixes in flowers and beasts, and takes care over even the smallest details. The top of the wall is cut into crenellations, with turrets at the corners.

The columns, for their part, never touch the ground. Twisted, they spring from brackets fixed to the wall, carved with roses, and rise to the balconies. Between two of them, a window opens behind black iron bars.

Cortina could have built higher. The 1887 regulations allowed three stories and required two: he stays with two. Yet he slips a mezzanine in above the ground floor, and together the two form the base of the façade. It was an apartment building. At the time, people lived on the ground floor too.

A third of the building has disappeared. In the 1970s, a demolition took it, on the Sorní street side. The corner has kept its wooden door, its niche, and the star of the Compagnie du Nord.