The early 1800s marked the rise of the American granite industry
Toolbox
By Paul Wood - Published: January 5, 2009
This is the latest in a series of monthly columns on central Vermont's granite industry provided by the Vermont Granite Industry of Barre.
New England farmers often split granite from surface boulders (glacial erratics) on their "back forty" as a part-time activity and used a corner of their barns for wintertime stone cutting. Some towns had common lands strewn with granite boulders.
Boulders on the Braintree, Mass., commons were the chief source of stone for many local building projects. People helped themselves until 1715, when the Braintree town fathers became concerned that the supply of stones would be exhausted and they declared that from then on permission would be required to remove any stone.
The early stoneworker might have used any one of a number of primitive splitting techniques. These included heating by fire and then splitting by dousing with cold water, heating by fire and splitting by impact with a dropped iron ball or a large sledge, use of expanding ice in holes or cracks, use of expanding wet wooden wedges in cracks, and grooving and then hammering along the groove.
The use of a flat wedge and flat shims in slots made by a cape chisel was a great improvement, providing better control over the direction of the splitting. The cape chisel is still used today by masons to remove old mortar in preparation for repointing brick masonry.
Granite was commonly used for retaining walls, house foundations, well linings, posts, steps, sills, lentils, hearthstones, wharves, and jetties. A few large granite structures were built in Boston in the 18th century, including the Hancock House, King's Chapel, the Old Powder House, and the Beacon Island Lighthouse – the first two of these having been built from boulders on the Braintree commons.
The granite industry in the United States first developed along coastal New England. Coastal quarries yielded different colors of granite. In Maine, there was pink granite from Deer Island and light gray (almost white) from Hallowell; in Massachusetts, blue gray or greenish from Cape Ann and dark gray from Quincy; Westerly, R.I. granite was gray and pink; and Stony Brook, Conn., granite was red.
Because granite is heavy and had a low value per pound, low-cost transportation was essential. Sloops and schooners that plied New England's coast filled this need and were able to deliver granite at low cost to the major cities along the Atlantic Coast.
One early 1800s exception was the inland quarry at Chelmsford, Mass. Barges on Middlesex Canal (built from 1795 to 1803) allowed the early development of the Chelmsford quarries (actually in Westford and Tyngsboro, Mass.) by making available low-cost shipment from Chelmsford to Boston's Charles River. Some early 19th-century granite buildings erected in Boston, including some built from Chelmsford granite, were the Boston Courthouse, New South Church, Congregational House, Parkman House, and University Hall.
Solomon Willard is considered to be the father of commercial granite in the United States. He was a man of many talents – carpenter, carver in wood and stone, draftsman, architect, quarry operator, building contractor, and inventor of the central heating furnace and many quarrying tools and machines.
In 1825, Willard was chosen superintendent and architect for the Bunker Hill Monument (built from 1825 to 1843) – a 220-foot high granite obelisk with a 30-foot square base. The monument includes a 295-step staircase, leading to an 11-foot square observation room. The monument required a total of 6,700 tons of granite. For this pioneering granite structure, Willard searched throughout coastal New England for granite and concluded by purchasing a quarry in Quincy, Mass., forever after known as the Bunker Hill Quarry.
To facilitate quarrying of the granite and erection of the monument, Willard invented a boom derrick, lifting jack, pulling jack, and hoisting jack. These inventions, in addition to the early 1800s introduction of a new method of splitting, put quarrying on a commercial footing. This new method, an improvement over the flat wedge and flat shims, used wedges and curved shims that fit against the wall of round, 6-inch deep holes made by a plug drill. Willard was probably the first quarry operator to make detailed costing calculations and, much to the consternation of other quarry owners, quoted prices just barely above the quarrying cost.
Essential for the delivery of granite to the Bunker Hill Monument site was a railroad, the first commercial railroad in the United States, designed by the master mason and engineer Gridley Bryant. The rails ran on a gradual downhill grade for a little over three miles from the quarry to a wharf on the Neponset River. From there, a schooner took the stone to the foot of Breed's Hill.
Bryant designed a specialized railway car under which blocks of granite could be suspended, and also a four-truck railway car with a capacity of sixty-four tons for large granite blocks. The granite cars ran on iron-capped wooden rails with granite sleepers and could be pulled fully-loaded by a single horse. Bryant also designed a cable-operated inclined plane that transported the granite down a steep slope from the quarry to the beginning of the railroad.
Other outstanding structures built from Bunker Hill Quarry granite were the Boston Custom House and the Minot's Ledge Lighthouse (completed in 1860). The Boston Custom House, a Doric style building in the shape of a Greek cross, was commenced in 1837 and completed in 1847. Thirty-two fluted columns, each weighing 42 tons, surround the building. In 1915, a tower Cape Ann gray granite was added, transforming the Custom House into Boston's first high-rise building.
Following the example set by Solomon Willard, New England quarry operators invented new ways of quarrying, shaping, handling, and transporting granite that resulted in much lower prices and in the availability of large granite blocks. The classical Greek revival style promoted by architects such as Charles Bullfinch, Alexander Parris, Solomon Willard, Ammi Burnham Young, and Gridley Bryant soon led to the design of many buildings utilizing large granite blocks, resulting in a massive but simple and clean effect. These buildings had no internal iron or steel frameworks but rather used bearing wall construction in which the granite walls supported the entire weight of the building.
The 1870s through the 1890s was a period of active memorialization of the Civil War dead, with large granite public memorials appearing in towns and cities across the nation.
By 1900, architects were preoccupied with monumentality, volume and formality. Great fortunes had been made by American businessmen and granite-faced steel-frameworked high-rise office buildings were erected as monuments to their owner's business success. Large and elaborate granite mausoleums were purchased as memorials to themselves and their families. Granite mansions the size of small hotels were built in the fashionable sections of America's major cities.
Indeed, granite had become a manifestation of conspicuous consumption.
As the railroads reached North America's interior, inland granite quarries were developed all along the Appalachian Mountains. The Appalachians are perhaps the oldest stone deposits in the world, with extensive beds of granite that have been conveniently exposed over hundreds of millions years by erosion and glaciation. These inland quarries were located in Quebec, Canada (pink/rose), Woodbury (light and medium gray), Barre (medium and dark gray), Bethel (white), Concord, N.H. (blue-gray), Cooperstown, Penn. (black), Mt. Airy, N.C. (light gray), Salisbury, N.C. (purplish pink), and Elberton, Ga. (blue). Also, a cluster of red granite quarries were developed in the Upper Midwest, including St. Cloud, Minn., Wassau, Wisc., Graniteville, Mo., and Milbank, S.D..
Rock of Ages Corporation, currently the nation's largest quarrier of granite, owns and operates nine quarries in the U.S., Canada and Ukraine, and its quarries yield a wide variety of stone – Barre gray, Bethel white, Salisbury pink, Gardenia white (Rockwell, N.C.), American black (Morgantown, Penn.), Kershaw pink (S.C.), Coral gray (Kershaw, S.C.), Laurentian pink (Guenette, Quebec), Stanstead gray (Stanstead, Quebec), and Galactic blue (Zhitomir, Ukraine).
Europe has had a vibrant granite industry for many centuries, predating that in America – especially for building stone in areas where forests of building timber had long since disappeared. America's building granite industry developed over two centuries – first exploiting the strength of several-foot-thick granite blocks in bearing wall construction and progressing to foot-or-less-thick granite ashlar (a squared stone cut true on all faces adjacent to other stones so as to permit tight mortar joints) cladding anchored on and supported by an internal brick and steel framework. Drawn to the natural beauty of stone, architects are again specifying granite cladding for buildings – this time using inch-or-less-thick veneer panels hung on a steel framework.
The American monumental granite industry grew rapidly in the late 19th century as efficient granite-cutting tools became available and as the more durable granite began to be used instead of marble monuments and gravestones that were dissolving under the effects of atmospheric pollution.
Since the 1990s, Asia has become an ever increasing presence with very low labor costs, allowing the manufacture of granite monuments and gravestones that are competitive in U.S. markets, even including the cost of shipment. The future success of America's granite industry will no doubt be built on excellence in design, craftsmanship and service.
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