El Album de Mi Padrino [Album of My Godfather] [manuscript cover title]

[Various locations in Cuba and Pennsylvania: contents ca, 1973. [25] leaves, totaling [40]pp., illustrated with thirty black-and-white and sepia-toned photographs, with detailed manuscript captions, plus seven large clippings from school publications, and six additional ephemeral items. Oblong folio. Black cloth, with alligator-patterned cloth on front board, with manuscript title below a drawn representation of a small pennant for Lehigh University. Covers worn, frayed, and chipped, alligator-style cloth curling a bit along fore edge. A few items loose from adhesive and a few with small tears, scattered spotting and soiling. Overall very good condition, with fascinating materiality. A lovingly-compiled photograph album and memorial book created by a young woman named Magdalena Sofia Guitart in tribute to her godfather, Rafael Genó, a Cuban engineer who studied at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Juan Rafael Genó Rizo was born in Santiago de Cuba in 1883. A doctoral thesis on Cuban architecture found online deems him one of the premiere Art Deco architects of Santiago, and the only one to obtain a degree abroad. Genó graduated with a degree in Civil Engineering from Lehigh in 1909, and from the University of Havana in 1913. He died in Miami, Florida in 1973.

This doting scrapbook was compiled (and heavily captioned in Spanish, which we hereafter present in translation) as a "Memorial which with love and pride I dedicate to my godfather and some of his works; a pale reflection of all the good he has done in his life," by Magdalena Sofia Guitart, who was born in 1936 in Santiago and arrived in Miami in 1958. She includes photos of Genó as a baby and a boy of 11 ("From a very young age, as you can see here, my godfather was a little gentleman") as well as in uniform alongside Mexican and Costa Rican comrades at Pennsylvania's Wayne Field. She lauds his "triumphs" and "genius" in "thousands of battles." Genó likely came to the United States following the Spanish-American War, during the growth of Cuban immigration resulting from increased American attention of the island country. All of the content in the album is artfully presented within decorative rules or floral borders, providing an unusual flair to the presentation. The book displays not only the hand-drawn Lehigh pennant on the cover, but also large, artistic renditions of the campus (and an internal shot of its library), clipped from school publications and comparing views from 1873, 1909 and 1933 (the relevance of Lehigh at the later date is unclear).

Additional photographs and decorative designs share the story as "our engineer" returns to Cuba and "begins to demonstrate his knowledge" in the mines of Ponupo. Soon "his hard work, integrity and honesty led him to be chosen" for other feats of engineering, including "la Iglesia [church] Los Desamparados, constructed by my godfather 1932" and a train terminal in Guantánamo. Images and a photographic clipping laud his renovations of "Colegio La Salle" in 1937. There are also six photos and a clipping showing Genó's work on the altar for the Eucharistic Congress held in Santiago in 1936, during which the original statue of Our Lady of Charity of El Cobre (Patroness of Cuba) was granted a canonical coronation by Pope Pius XI. The album also holds a clipping naming Genó as president of the Board of Directors of Santiago's Urban Property Center, an inauguration ribbon and brochure for the Municipal Food Market in 1950 (with which he was also involved), and photos of the celebrated engineer later in life.

A captivating and carefully-assembled homage created by a Cuban immigrant to the United States, honoring a loved one who was educated in Pennsylvania and then returned to his home country to serve as a noted engineer during the first half of the 20th century.