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Tools and Machinery of the Granite Industry
Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Jun 2006 by Wood, Paul
Essential for the delivery of granite to the Bunker Hill Monument site was a railroad, designed by the master mason and engineer Gridley Bryant, that ran on a gradual downhill slope 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 had designed a special car under which blocks of granite could be suspended and also a four-truck railway car with a capacity of sixty-four tons. The granite cars ran on iron-capped wooden rails with granite sleepers and could be pulled 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 (completed in 1847) (Figure 7) and Minot's Ledge Lighthouse (completed in 1860).
Following the example set by 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 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 the large granite blocks that had simplicity of design and resulted in a massive but clean effect. The 1870s through the 1890s was a period of active memorialization of the Civil War dead with large 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, 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 (Figure 8). 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, granite quarries were developed along the Appalachian Mountains, including Quebec, Canada (pink/rose); Woodbury, Vermont (gray); Barre, Vermont (gray); Bethel, Vermont (white); Concord, New Hampshire (blue-gray); Cooperstown, Pennsylvania (black); Mt. Airy, North Carolina (light gray); Salisbury, North Carolina (purplish pink); and Elberton, Georgia (blue). Also, a cluster of red granite quarries were developed in the Great Lakes region, including St. Cloud, Minnesota; Wassau, Wisconsin; Graniteville, Missouri; and Milbank, South Dakota. 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 variety of stone-Barre gray (Barre, Vermont), Bethel white (Bethel, Vermont), Salisbury pink (Salisbury, North Carolina), Gardenia white (Rockwell, North Carolina), American black (Morgantown, Pennsylvania), Kershaw pink (Kershaw, South Carolina), Coral gray (Kershaw, South Carolina), Laurentian pink (Guenette, Quebec), Stanstead gray (Stanstead, Quebec), and Galactic blue (Zhitomir, Ukraine).
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