Stories in Stone (40 page)
Authors: David B. Williams
architrave
Lowest of three parts of an entablature resting directly on a column.
balustrade
A row of slender upright posts, or columns, supporting a railing.
batholith
A large body (at least forty square miles in area) of magma that has cooled underground.
bedding
Layers or beds of rock; generally applies to sedimentary rock.
boom
A long beam extending out and usually up from the central pole of a derrick; used for guiding and supporting items.
brownstone
Sandstone that has a small percentage of iron that has oxidized and colored the rock red to brown.
A building, generally a
row house, built with brownstone.
calcite
A mineral made of calcium carbonate,CaCO3.
Cambrian
A period of geologic time from 542 to 488 million years ago.
case-hardened
To harden the outside surface.
In quarrying this is usually done by letting a stone sit out, or season, for weeks to months.
chert
A very fine-grained sedimentary rock made of silica.
conglomerate
A sedimentary rock consisting of rounded sediments of varying sizes.
console
An ornamented bracket with parallel sides and often topped by a horizontal slab.
Corinthian
A type of column with an elaborate capital, often depicting acanthus leaves.
cornice
Projecting ornamental molding that crowns a building or other part of a building, such as an arch or wall.
Cretaceous
A period of geologic time from 145 to 65 million years ago.
curtain wall
A nonload-bearing wall built in front of a structure.
cycad
A group of seed-producing plants with stout trunks and large compound leaves; common in the Jurassic but now much less widespread.
derrick
A machine for moving heavy objects and often consisting of a mast with a boom attached at or near the base; supporting wires
and pulleys allow movement of the boom.
The name comes from a seventeenth-century hangman who plied his trade in London.
diatom
Microscopic, single-celled algae with cell walls made of silica; they live in fresh and saltwater.
diorite
A plutonic (magma cooled within the earth) rock richer in darker minerals than granite.
Doric
A column with a plain capital and no base.
entablature
The part of an order above the column and consisting of the architrave, frieze, and cornice.
erratic
A large boulder transported and deposited by a glacier.
extension
In geology this refers to spreading or pulling apart.
fanlight
A fan-shaped window above a doorway.
Can also refer to any shaped window directly atop a door.
Farallon Plate
A very large oceanic plate that subducted under North America.
Its remaining remnants are the Cocos, Rivera, and Juan de Fuca
plates.
feather
A metal shim, often thin and curved, either slightly or at a right angle, at the top.
floodplain
Area where water spreads when a river floods.
Over time the floodplain accumulates sediment.
foraminifera
Single-celled, generally microscopic protists with shells.
They evolved in the Cambrian and are still widespread in marine
ecosystems.
frieze
A decorated or plain band on a wall below the cornice.
gang saw
A saw made of multiple thin slabs of metal, which cut through stone like a giant bread slicer; named for its gang of blades.
garret
A room or apartment in the uppermost or attic floor of a house.
gneiss
High-grade metamorphic rock often consisting of bands of dark and light minerals.
Gondwana
An ancient supercontinent, roughly 650 to 130 million years old, consisting of Antarctica,Africa, South America, India,Madagascar,
and Australia.
Also called Gondwanaland.
The name refers to a region in India with extensive sedimentary rocks, originally
used to characterize other parts of the supercontinent.
graywacke
A type of sandstone with mud and angular particles of quartz and feldspar.
hood molding
A projecting molding that blocks rain on a wall or over a window, door, or arch.
hornblende
A dark mineral common in igneous and metamorphic rocks.
hot spot
A stationary and localized region of heat in the upper mantle, which generates volcanic activity such as occurs in Hawaii
and Yellowstone National Park; also called a mantle plume.
igneous
Rock that started as a liquid and solidified.
Igneous rocks can be intrusive (plutonic) or extrusive (volcanic).
impost
The part of a pillar or column (usually molding) upon which an arch rests.
interfinger
Lateral intersecting of layers of different rock types.
Ionic
A column with a capital consisting of scrolls or volutes on either side of the column.
keystone
The central stone of an arch or rib.
lathe
A machine for turning or trimming stone and other substances.
The stone is held horizontally and spins against the cutting
blade.
Laurasia
A supercontinent consisting of Siberia, Europe, North America, and parts of China.
lintel
A horizontal beam, often made of stone, spanning an opening, such as a window or door.
magma
Underground molten rock.
mantle
The seventeen-hundred-mile-thick layer between the earth’s crust and the core.
Plates of the earth’s crust move along the
mantle’s upper layer, called the asthenosphere.
metamorphic
A rock that has undergone a solid state change due to pressure and temperature.
mica
Any of a group of transparent, sheetlike minerals including biotite (clear) and muscovite (black).
moraine
Rocks and sediment transported and deposited by glacial action.
mudstone
A generic term for a rock consisting of grains generally less than 1.64 of an inch wide.
nematode
Mostly microscopic multicellular animals also known as roundworms.
olivine
An olive green mineral that solidifies at high temperatures.
paleomagnetism
Faint magnetic orientation of iron-rich magnetite crystals preserved within a rock.
Used by geologists to ascertain the rock’s
latitude at time of deposition or crystallization.
Pangaea
The great supercontinent made of all the continents.
It existed between about 300 and 200 million years ago.
pediment
A low-pitched gable over a portico, window, doors, or façade.
peridotite
A very dark rock composed almost entirely of pyroxene and olivine.
The mantle is primarily made of peridotite.
planer
A machine that smoothes and/or thins stone and other substances.
plug
A wedge inserted between two shims, or feathers, and hammered down into a hole to split rock.
pluton
A body of rock that has solidified within the earth.
porphyry
A rock with a texture consisting of larger grains set in a fine-grained matrix.
portico
A roofed space at the front of a building consisting of columns and a pediment.
protozoa
A single-celled animal, such as an amoeba, a paramecium, and giardia.
pyroclastic
A general term to describe material ejected violently from a volcano.
quoins
Dressed stones at the corner of a building.
repoint
To replace damaged mortar in a wall.
rift valley
A large-scale valley formed when a tectonic plate or plates begin to split apart.
Rodinia
A supercontinent made of all the continents, (though they did not look exactly as they do at present), which formed about
1,200 million years ago.
sedimentary rock
A rock formed by the deposition of sediment by wind,water, or ice; such rocks are usually layered or bedded.
sleeper
A piece of stone or wood that supports the rails of a railway.
spall
To break or split off.
span of horses
A pair of horses.
stoop
An uncovered platform that rises via stairs to the entrance of a house or other building.
stucco
A type of plaster made of lime, sand, and fine-grained material mixed with water.
terrane
A fault-bounded body of rock, with limited extent, characterized by a geologic history different than that of adjacent rocks.
tonalite
A type of igneous rock also known as quartz-diorite.
veneer
A thin surface coating on a building.
It provides no structural support.
voussoir
A wedge-shaped stone forming one part of an arch.
yoke of oxen
A pair of oxen.
1: “
THE MOST HIDEOUS STONE EVER QUARRIED
”
1.
Junius Henri Browne,
Great Metropolis;A Mirror of New York
(Hartford: American Publishing Co., 1869), 222.
2.
James Richardson, “The New Homes of New York: A Study of Flats,”
Scribner's
Monthly
8, no.
1 (1874): 67.
3.
Marianna G.
van Rensselaer, “Recent Architecture in America V: City Dwellings,”
Century Illustrated Magazine
31, no.
4 (1886): 550.
4.
Details on Vanderbilt, his money, and his building come from Robert A.
M.
Stern, Thomas Mellins, and David Fishman,
New York 1880: Architecture and Urbanism
in the Gilded Age
(New York: Monacelli Press, 1999), 568–97.
5.
Edith Wharton,
A Backward Glance
(New York: D.
Appleton-Century Company, 1934), 55.
6.
Iron makes up about 3 percent of the rock, so it would not work to mine it.
7.
Browne,
Great Metropolis
, 222.
8.
Despite, or in spite of, its bad reputation, perhaps the most famous brownstone denizens of modern times moved into their
basement apartment on November 10, 1969.
As such,
Sesame Street
’s Bert and Ernie were catalysts for reintroducing brownstones to the greater world.
And who could be a better spokescurmudgeon
for the stoop than Oscar the Grouch, who lived in his garbage can next to Bert and Ernie’s entryway.
9.
Alex Barrett, interview with author, New York,NY, October 23, 2006.
10.
The bones of
Anchisaurus
were the first dinosaur parts found in North America.
Solomon Edwards discovered the bones in 1818 when digging a well in
East Windsor, Connecticut.
Dr.
Nathan Smith, author of the first scientific description of the fossils, wrote, “Whether they
are human or brute animal bones, it is an important fact as it relates to Geology.” “Fossil Bones found in red sand stone,”
American Journal of Science
2, no.
1 (1820): 146–47.
Nicholas G.
McDonald designated these fossils as the first found in “Connecticut in the Age of Dinosaurs,”
Rocks & Minerals
70 (1995): 412–18.
11.
There are numerous accounts of the Noah’s Raven discovery and its eventual acquisition by Hitchcock.
The most thorough
comes from Nancy Pick,
Curious
Footprints: Professor Hitchcock’s Dinosaur Tracks & Other Natural History Treasures
at Amherst College
(Amherst, MA: Amherst College Press, 2006).
Pick’s book also contains good information on Hitchcock and his life.
12.
Information on locations and habits of
Anomoepus
comes from Paul E.
Olsen and Emma C.
Rainforth, “The Early Jurassic Ornithischian Dinosaurian Ichnogenus Anomoepus” in
The Great Rift Valleys of Pangea in Eastern North
America: Sedimentology, Stratigraphy, and Paleontology
vol.
2, edited by Peter M.
Letourneau and Paul E.
Olsen (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003).
13.
Steve Sauter, interview with author, Amherst, Massachusetts, October 26, 2006.
I also based much of my description of
Hitchcock on my conversation with Sauter.
14.
Pick,
Curious Footprints,
6.
15.
Edward Hitchcock, “Ornithichnology.
Description of the Foot Marks of Birds, (Ornithichnites) on new Red Sandstone in Massachusetts,”
American
Journal of Science and Arts
29, no.
2 (1836): 307–41.
16.
Edward Hitchcock,
Reminiscences Of Amherst College, Historical, Scientific, Biographical
and Autobiographical: Also, of Other and Wider Life Experiences
, (Northampton, MA: Bridgman & Childs, 1863), 84.
17.
Ibid., 85.
18.
Hitchcock used the phrase “gem of the Cabinet” for a species he called
Brontozoum Sillimanium
in
Ichnology of New England
(Boston: William White, 1858), 68.
19.
Alison Guinness, interview with author, Portland, Connecticut, October 24, 2006.
20.
Many of the statistics and quotes on the history of brownstone come from two papers by Alison Guinness.
Alison Guinness,“Heart
of Stone: The Brownstone Industry of Portland, Connecticut,” in
The Great Rift Valleys of Pangea
, 224–47.
Alison Guinness, “The Portland Brownstone Quarries,”
The Chronicle
of the Early American Industries Association, Inc.
55, no.
3 (2002): 95–112.
21.
J.
S.
Bayne,
Town of Portland: History of Middlesex County, Connecticut
(New York: J.
B.
Beers & Co., 1884), 516.
22.
Such rock is known as freestone; the term applies to any sandstone or limestone that cuts easily.
Freestone predates both
of the more specific geologic terms by several hundred years.
23.
Edmund M.
Blunt,
Blunt’s Stranger’s Guide to the City of New-York
(New York: Edmund M.
Blunt, 1817), 45.
24.
James Fenimore Cooper didn’t agree with the builders and thought the deep red brownstone was in “far better taste” than
the marble front.
“The moment the rear of the City Hall is seen, I was struck with an impression of the magnificent effect
which might be produced by the use of its material in Gothic architecture,” he wrote in letter VIII to Baron Von Kemperfelt
in
Notions of
the Americans: Picked up a Traveling Bachelor
(Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Care, 1835).
25.
Alain de Botton,
The Architecture of Happiness
(New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 28.
26.
Charles Lockwood,
Bricks and Brownstone
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1972), 104.
27.
A.
J.
Downing,
The Architecture of Country Houses
(New York: D.
Appleton &Co., 1850), 198, 200.
28.
Bayne,
Town of Portland
, 520.
29.
All statistics from articles by Alison Guinness.
The building now houses the exclusive Pacific Union Club, which acquired
the structure in 1907 from Flood’s daughter.
After the earthquake, the club gutted and rebuilt the house with stone from the
Portland quarry.
30.
Lewis Mumford,
The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America, 1865–1895
(New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1932), 2–3.
31.
Mike Meehan, interview with author, Portland, Connecticut, October 25, 2006.
2:
THE GRANITE CITY
1.
William S.
Pattee,
A History of Old Braintree and Quincy
(Quincy: Green &Prescott, 1878), 498.
2.
Shaw gave this speech on December 13, 1859, at the 473rd meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
The speech was reprinted in volume 4 of the
Proceedings of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences
, 353–59.
3.
Shaw’s speech is the only known reference to Mr.
Tarbox.
He doesn’t appear in newspapers, death records, or any other official
document from the period, at least none James and Mary Gage could find.
They are coauthors of
The Art
of Splitting Stone: Early Rock Quarrying Methods in Pre-Industrial New England
(Amesbury, MA: Powwow River Books, 2002).
No one knows exactly what Tarbox said.
I based my description of the Tarbox method
on the Gages’ book, Shaw’s speech, and on an interview in Boston, Massachusetts, with James Gage in December 2003.
4.
Pattee,
History of Old Braintree
, 515.
5.
Bartram’s letter is quoted in the
Art of Splitting Stone
, p.
26.
6.
Information on the Finnish and Egyptian methods comes from George P.
Merrill,
Stones for Building and Decoration
, 3rd ed.
(New York: John Wiley &Sons, 1903), 393.
Merrill’s is one of the best books detailing the stone industry.
7.
Smoky quartz can be turned clear again by heat.
I have fond memories of fun times in college when we took a crystal of
smoky quartz, placed it on a stove, cranked the burner up, and drove out the color.
Those were the days!
8.
Arthur W.
Brayley,
History of the Granite Industry of New England
(Boston: National Association of Granite Industries of the United States, 1913), 22–23.
9.
Willard left no record of his trek; the story comes from a single sentence written on a blank page in the notes of the
Bunker Hill Building Committee in August 1849.
The author was Amos Lawrence, a central player in the construction of the monument
since the beginning.
Willard’s journey is mentioned in William Wheildon’s
Memoir of Solomon Willard
(Boston: Bunker Hill Monument Association, 1865), 108.
10.
George Washington Warren,
The History of Bunker Hill Monument Association
During the First Century of the United States Of America
(Boston: James R.
Osgood and Company, 1877), 202.
11.
Ibid., 47.
12.
Ibid., 157.
13.
Quoted in Sarah J.
Purcell, “Commemoration, Public Art, and the Changing Meaning of the Bunker Hill Monument,”
Public Historian
25, no.
2 (2003): 55–71.
14.
Wheildon,
Memoir
, 109.
15.
Warren,
History
, 140.
16.
Information and quotes from Bryant come from Charles B.
Stuart,
Lives and
Works of Civil and Military Engineers of America
(New York: D.
Von Nostrand, 1871), 119–31.
17.
Information on Perkins’s contributions to the project comes from Carl Seaburg and Stanley Paterson,
Merchant Prince of Boston: Colonel T.
H.
Perkins,
1764–1854
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
18.
Ibid., 331, 333–34.
19.
Vic Campbell, interview with author, Quincy, Massachusetts, January 20, 2006.
20.
Fred Gamst, “The Context and Significance of America’s First Railroad, on Boston’s Beacon Hill,”
Technology and Culture
33, no.
1 (1992): 66–100.
21.
Seaburg and Paterson,
Merchant Prince
, 337–38.
22.
Richard Bailey, interview with author, Boston, Massachusetts, January 19, 2006.
23.
Percy E.
Raymond, “Notes on the Ontogeny of Paradoxides, with a description of a new species from Braintree, Mass,”
Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative
Zoology
58, no.
4 (1914): 225–47.
24.
W.
O.
Crosby and G.
F.
Loughlin, “A Descriptive Catalogue of the Building Stones of Boston and Vicinity,”
Technology Quarterly
17 (1904): 165–85.
25.
The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes
(Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1892), 19.
26.
Wheildon,
Memoir
, 142.
27.
Warren,
History
, 215.
28.
Ibid., 216.
29.
Ibid., 280–83.
30.
Ibid., 284, 298.
31.
S.
Willard,
Plans and Sections of the Obelisk on Bunker’s Hill
(Boston: Chas.
Cook’s Lith., 1843), 9.
32.
Jane Holtz Kay,
Lost Boston
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980), 130.
3:
POETRY IN STONE
1.
“Winged Rock,”
The Selected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers
(New York: Random House, 1937), 361.
2.
The Selected Letters of Robinson Jeffers, 1897–1962
, ed.
Ann N.
Ridgeway (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968), 213.