Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/540

522 by stating that during a visit to the locality in the summer of 1883 the writer was shown the remains of a huge block of granite three hundred feet long, twenty feet wide, and from six to ten feet thick, that had been blown out from the quarry in a single piece and afterward broken up. The largest single block ever quarried and dressed was the General Wool Monument now in Troy, New York, which measured, when completed, sixty feet in height by five and a half feet square at the base, or only nine feet shorter than the Egyptian Obelisk now in Central Park, New York. The stone is light gray, often slightly pinkish in color, and corresponds closely with that from the now abandoned quarries on Dix Island, whence were taken the granite monoliths, thirty-one feet in height, for the Treasury Building at Washington. Second only to the quarries at Vinalhaven are those at Gloucester, Massachusetts—the quarries of the Cape Ann Granite Company. This rock is coarser in texture than that of Vinalhaven, and often of a slight greenish color. The new Masonic Temple at Philadelphia, and the Butler House, on Capitol Hill, Washington, are good illustrations of the adaptability of this stone for general building purposes.

Closely resembling the Cape Ann granite is that quarried at Quincy in the same State. Quarries were first regularly opened here in 1803, though it was from bowlders of this rock that was built in 1749-'54 King's Chapel, still standing on the corner of School and Tremont Streets, Boston. Quincy granite also was used in the construction of the Bunker Hill Monument, and it was for the transportation of this stone from the quarries to Charlestown that was built the first railway in America. The color of the stone is deep blue gray, and its fitness for interior decorative work is well shown in the granite stairways and polished pilasters of the new City Buildings in Philadelphia.

For columns, house-trimmings, and especially monumental work, the granite from Hallowell, Maine, is used most extensively. This rock is of fine and even grain, and very light gray, almost white in color. Its texture is such that it can be carved very readily, and it has been used in statuary work more than any other of our granites. The statues on the Pilgrim Monument, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, are of this stone. An Italian designer, who served his apprenticeship in Roman studios, is employed by this company, and many of the workmen at the quarries are said to be Italians who worked in marble in Italy, but have learned to cut granite since their arrival at Hallowell.

A granite, closely resembling that of Hallowell, is quarried very extensively near Concord, New Hampshire, and is used for similar purposes. Stones similar to these, but not at present in the market, are found near Frederickton, Virginia, and Atlanta, Georgia.

The red and pink granites now in the market are nearly all from Calais and Jonesboro, in the eastern part of Maine, though others are