“Eight massive columns of Rockport Pink Granite along the facade of the Security National Bank, Los Angeles, lend architectural beauty and pleasing dignity to its exterior.
With strength unshaken and beauty unimpaired, they will stand 100 years from now, as an outward evidence of institutional solidity , a lasting monument to the architect’s genius and practical sense.”
Rockport Granite Company
C. Harry Rogers – Treasurer and General Manager
Rockport • Massachuetts
Grey Stone Beginnings
The Pigeon Hill Company’s ‘Upper Pit’ was renamed after this steel derrick was constructed…
….
Then they went on to work better paying jobs, those foreigners who came in, why they could not speak English, they could not understand the obligation of an agreement. They were men of different nationalities, and the larger number, having an imperfect knowledge of English, were obliged to transact business with one another through interpreters. Their meeting places were widely separated, and communication was difficult. — from Public Documents of Massachusetts, Annual Reports of Various Public Officers and Institutions for the year 1906.
“I walked out into the Flat Ledge Quarry drought, and as the parched floors revealed their machineries and clockworks of quarry time,
deep below the waterlines, there my soul emerged.” – Leslie Bartlett, September 18, 2013
This is the working version of the Preface to BREAK Stone Water Heart
Please feel free to comment upon it.
As I have spent the hours of viewing old images, chipping away at what makes sense, what is unique, what is common. I keep noticing how always in photos with men, somewhere in the image is a hanging coat. This attracted my attention…
There were two choices when shipping dimension granite by stone sloop (or rail).
If the stone was unfinished, the pieces were in surface contact with one another, and any dressing would take place at the project wharf or destination. The dressing crews often moved from job to job. I’ve come across newspaper accounts of Rockport Granite stone being used in Chicago, but being dressed by a crew from the Quincy Granite Company.
If the stone was dressed here on Cape Ann, then the pieces would be wooden boxed to protect the edges and dressings.
The image below is Cut Stone bound for the “Manhattan Bridge No.3” New York. The stone is poised at the cutting shed of Bay View.
“Among ancient and modern architects
There is a principle, or proverb…
The arch never sleeps.
From this we might derive
If the arch holds, all else holds.
Love stands and hangs as an arch.
The rainbow is an arch.
Hate and pride break arches.
Love and understanding build
Unbreakable arches.
Carl Sandburg before Congress on the Centennial of the end of the U.S. Civil War
The spur for this post follows a flurry of comments on yesterday’s post “Plucking our memories…”
Below is a photograph added which identifies the small “water” to the North (map right side) of Lanes Cove.
The image is found on pp.17 of Barbara Erkilla’s Hammers on Stone.
Her caption reads: One Swedish motion operator, near Lane’s Cove on the north side, had a windmill to pump out excess water.
(The image is from the Alexander R. Cheves Collection, slide provided by William Hoyt.)
Break: Stone Water Heart 