Rockport Granite Company, The

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Sep 2005 by Hall, Elton W

Harper's New Monthly Magazine for March, 1885, included an article by Ellen Day Hale entitled "The Cape Ann Quarries." The article is a pleasant account of an expedition by a group of young female art students from Boston traveling by train to Rockport, Massachusetts, in search of suitable motifs for sketching. Upon their arrival at the Rockport Granite Company, a quarryman shows them around and gives them a few facts (Figure l). They observe a steam drill at work and learn that it can drill a two-inch hole twenty to thirty feet deep in a day, enabling the men to loosen 500-1000 tons of granite in a single blast. The men then go to work with hand drills, the stone goes through the various cutting and finishing processes, and is eventually taken by a railroad to the waterfront for shipment to the customers. The article is illustrated by a series of wood engravings showing views of the quarry, its equipment and some of the processes. They are: "On the Way to the Quarries," "Preparing to Unload," "Sanding a Slab," 'The Great Arch," "At Work in the Great Quarry," (Figure 2) "Chiseling the Line," "The Derrick," "Polishing a Column," "At Anchor," and "Chipping Tent." Apparently the proprietors of the quarry were pleased with the illustrations and selected some of them, as well as a few other wood engravings not in the article (Figures 3 and 4), to form a souvenir pictorial booklet as a keepsake for their customers and potential customers. The eight-page booklet is seven inches high and four -and-one-half inches wide (Figure 5). The back cover carries an advertisement for the llockport Granite Company. The quarries were opened in 1840 and provide rough and hammered granite for building, cemetery and monumental work. In 1864 an earlier quarry was reorganized as the Rockport Granite Company. They expanded its facilities, and gradually bought out six other quarries on Cape Ann. At its peak, the company employed over eight hundred men.

Granite is a great building material. The obstacles to its use had always been the difficulties of working it and moving it around once it was free from the ledge. About the turn of the nineteenth century, the method of splitting it by driving wedges into a row of holes appeared in Massachusetts.1 As the technology spread, buildings of granite blocks began to appear. When steam and later compressed air were available for drilling the holes and dressing the quarry blocks, the use of granite proliferated. The location of Rockport on Cape Ann, surrounded by deep water, made transportation anywhere along the coast relatively easy. Growth of cities and the need to pave their streets produced a demand for millions of paving blocks and miles of curbstones. Rockport and other quarries near the water produced stone in vast quantity.

In the years between the Civil War and World War I, as we became an industrial nation producing both private and public wealth of unprecedented magnitude, large residences, public and academic buildings, monuments, cemeteries, bridges, churches and railroad stations were built of granite. Celebrated architects such as H. II. Richardson and McKim, Mead, and White, well trained in the classical tradition, designed structures that gave much employment to quarrymen and stonecutters. Skilled tradesman from Europe came in large numbers to supply the hands to do the work. America was second to none in the possession of resources and the ability to construct great buildings of granite. These structures spoke eloquently of the wealth, power, and taste of those who created them.

Alas, times and finance changed. The advent of reinforced concrete offered what appeared to be a suitable, less expensive, and more convenient substitute for granite. One by one the quarries closed and the workmen were forced to find other employment. The Rockport Granite Company held on until 1930, when, after a devastating strike, ownership of the company changed to unidentified individuals. It soon closed permanently.

As time went on and wealth changed hands, many buildings fell on hard times and were pulled down. But granite is enduring. Many quarries have been reopened. New technologies and new architectural styles have generated an interest in it. As old concrete crumbles granite is reappearing. Many towns are installing crisp new granite curbstones along their streets to replace the crumbling concrete that replaced earlier granite curbstones. Although buildings are covered with thinly sawn veneer, dressed by flame rather than ponderous blocks dressed by hammer, the stone still presents a pleasing texture and variety of colors as well as that most important of qualities: durability.

Notes

1. Hammers on Stone by Harbara Krkkila (Gloucester, Massachusetts: Peter Smith, 1.087) gives a general history of granite quarrying in eastern Massachusetts, with concentration on the quarries on Cape Ann. sec also Donald Armstead, "Plug and Feather, A Simple Tool Yet Very Effective," The Chronicle, 47, No. 2. (1994), 43-45.