tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-39697551866204505452024-03-14T04:30:12.072-07:00Stories in StoneThe interfingering between people and rockDavid B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-87350330819418633712020-04-08T06:55:00.002-07:002020-04-08T06:55:34.594-07:00Greetings. Just a quick update to this old site if you happen to reach it.<br />
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My new website is <a href="http://www.geologywriter.com/">www.geologywriter.com</a>, which contains information about my books, other writing projects, and blog.<br />
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I am also using <a href="https://twitter.com/geologywriter" target="_blank">Twitter</a> under @geologywriter.David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-28511212414736802782011-11-03T10:30:00.000-07:002011-11-03T10:35:06.510-07:00Rock Versus Stone: A link to my new blog siteA few people have asked so here's a link to my most recent posting on my new blog site. It's ponders the eternal question of Rock Versus Stone, is there a difference?<div><br /></div><div>http://geologywriter.com/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/rock-or-stone-is-there-a-difference/ </div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-44710796933319571122011-06-13T07:30:00.000-07:002011-06-13T07:35:18.059-07:00New Blog and Web SiteGreetings all. Just a short note to let everyone know that I have moved by blog to my new web site and will no longer be posting at this site.<div><br /></div><div>Here is a link to the <a href="http://geologywriter.com/category/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/">new blog</a>. <a href="http://geologywriter.com/category/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/">http://geologywriter.com/category/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/</a></div><div><br /></div><div>And here is a link to my <a href="http://geologywriter.com/">new web site</a>. <a href="http://geologywriter.com/">http://geologywriter.com/</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks kindly for your interest and input in my geology writings.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you go to the new site, you will see that I am working on a new book, about the natural and cultural history of Cairns (the piles of rock that mark trails), and that I am continuing my blog on building stone. I also hope to broaden the scope of that blog to include more aspects of geology.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sincerely,</div><div>David B. Williams</div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-57026179239987128992011-03-10T08:13:00.000-08:002011-03-10T08:24:41.385-08:00Seattle Stone: Lobby #2, Smith Tower marble<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I would like to return to Smith Tower and look at the other beautiful stone that graces its lobby. It is a classic marble, quarried from Tokeen on Marble Island, just off the west side of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Tokeen was the more major of two marble quarries in the area. First to open was Calder, at the north end of Prince of Wales Island but it closed about the time that Tokeen was being more fully developed by R. L. Fox of Seattle. Marble Island was initially called Fox Island.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the fall of 1903, Fox and several investors started the Great American Marble Company. Apparently the money men had noble aspirations or visions of grandeur. They definitely had other problems, including financial troubles and interpersonal conflicts. Turns out that one investor, Robert Ball, was actually one Charles Mains, a lawyer from Michigan disbarred for shady shenanigans.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtUJ5ThF_MHPeR5xytuGMLu8fc2lY83gH_AXNY6N8OHoDbCgzYOZJwAScEwJQuISETBb3vany9vItiBgUoxLVdtA4T9CokC4nNghQGfJ39TVuvsEtbtmCBlW8KkI4oU7e94PEVx15sJjs/s400/getimage-1.exe.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582486762680387474" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 243px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Quarry at Tokeen, photo from </span><a href="http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cdmg21&CISOPTR=6513&REC=5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Alaska State Library Digital Collections</span></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Meanwhile, the owners of the Vermont Marble Company (VMC), in Vermont, had been hearing rumors of “mountains of marble – ‘quantities beyond calculation’ – and of a quality such that ‘no other marble in the world was superior.” Eventually representatives of VMC made it to Marble Island, verified the rumors, and noted a good potential market for the stone. D. H. Bixler wrote in 1908 to VMC “As for the future of Seattle there cannot be much doubt. It seems as though it will surely grow…The pace has been set for first class buildings and any that follow will have to have more or less interior marble.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99wZtl8UKYom2E_Xw0huDyKfJc9x3bufaFX_E1m_RndatpPvyxZf7VkMAercamK5Vt1Kl8Aen5CjC69_gjlCSRPsS29exnx4suFlAeupisN_kLDmYtbWjF0VZHh_KaAJT6YsP8rzw39Y/s400/getimage.exe.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582486300207793122" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Men at Tokeen, photo from </span><a href="http://vilda.alaska.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/cdmg21&CISOPTR=346&REC=12"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Alaska State Library Digital Collections</span></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">With VMC now holding the rights to the marble, they began to develop operations. The initial shipment of 101 tons of marble left Tokeen on July 18, 1909. As many as eight quarries operated with most blocks going to the VMC yard in Tacoma. During the peak years of operation from 1912 to 1915, more than 4,360 blocks were shipped to Tacoma. Cut stone went into buildings from Boston to Honolulu including post offices in Bellingham and San Diego; the Empress Theater in Salt Lake City; the county building in Pittsburgh, and the Pearl Harbor Naval Hospital. In Seattle, it went into King County Courthouse, the Hoge Building, the Bank of California and Smith Tower.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFckDoC9bfs5zxBSjXtWmPAopaToDg5vnoXK0khUbIZO7-VwTqNVc6NFgT5N3TxT-TuvlN9fswt8fvOunDRAs1iMUu4fkvTiLrANBzQ08pkWD76DYLnPPEOSt8uTUmDviy5zV6RF8PpS0/s400/DSC05752.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582485885681099314" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">Alaska marble in the Smith Tower</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small; ">The marble comes from metamorphosed layers of the Heceta Limestone, an Early to Late Silurian (430 to 420mya). Subsequent intrusion of a hornblende diorite metamorphosed the limestone into a marble. Parts of the Heceta is rich in fossils, though none are found in the marble beds. The limestone formed mostly on a shallow marine platform with some deeper water deposition, too.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <span style="font-family:Georgia;mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;font-size:16px;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiT-IeIHcRJaW62r10NF3LACxJ60-bys5Dh3jCH9mSk1IN_uQk1y4yWUz_kDC_6oj0dy_kweW9KynuaB_4RZHxrEtFodImCNpjkFMNt2nBXWr9QRf09XIDg_91JP4u2N-Ydih7_cpKyULo/s400/DSC05751.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582485879476549794" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">Smith Tower interior and route to safety</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:Georgia;mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In my next posting, I will show a few photos of the third stone in Smith Tower, a fossil-rich limestone. Very exciting!</span></span><br /><!--EndFragment--> </div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-2051614473827286322011-02-16T07:42:00.000-08:002011-02-16T14:35:34.287-08:00Seattle Stone: Lobby #2, Smith Tower onyx<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhynuUvPDrEInf5tzdlqkzR8blUsZhyphenhyphenyi_cDhLBMYvxUik40XWIFPUJecBdRiOrDPSzRsN03ycpzFBxndhppHziZHPImEkaMilqFm_zgisxo48xTvr5W19VLMOrl4vGtZSg9dN4ekOOiic/s1600/DSC05753.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 266px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhynuUvPDrEInf5tzdlqkzR8blUsZhyphenhyphenyi_cDhLBMYvxUik40XWIFPUJecBdRiOrDPSzRsN03ycpzFBxndhppHziZHPImEkaMilqFm_zgisxo48xTvr5W19VLMOrl4vGtZSg9dN4ekOOiic/s400/DSC05753.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574315503160654930" /></a><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In continuing my short tour of Seattle lobbies, I turn to what is one of the best known lobbies in the downtown area. Smith Tower is also one of Seattle’s more famous buildings. Opened on July 4, 1914, the 462-foot tall building was the tallest building west of Ohio at the time. Over the years, the mostly terra cotta clad edifice has borne the brunt of many incorrect claims. As a </span><a href="http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=4310"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">fine essay on the historylink.org</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> web site reports, it was never the fourth tallest building in the world, or even outside of New York.</span></span></div></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Despite not meeting the aspirations of some, Smith Tower does sport a rather handsome lobby. Two stones dominate, onyx marble from Mexico and marble from Alaska. This post will focus on the Mexican rock.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFFEPeCBDXrh9mslNnm2S8tvO_FRqJRPZeMwehJtN6kmkwsswbPgMb-8uXwe0tc4LP1JigQEQIqe8imFj0Pt4Uln5R_h8pwMAHqELHL4b15gYNrRQaJZY1UTOKsGTStXK3CDfYagZd6l0/s320/DSC05747.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574314956950397506" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></span><div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Onyx is a notoriously confusing stone. True onyx is a variety of quartz. It is sometimes referred to as layered chalcedony or black-and-white agate. The onyx used as building stone is not made of quartz but of calcite and is known as onyx marble. Because such calcareous onyx became popular in the United States through stone quarried near Mexico City, it is also called Mexican onyx, as well, no matter its point of origin. Onyx marble used in ancient Rome and by early Egyptians usually came from Algeria. All onyx marble is popular because of the colorful layering and ability to be highly polished. Color variation depends on the amount of iron and manganese and their oxidation states in the deposits, which become layered as they accumulate in pools.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Smith Tower onyx panels are from Baja California from an area known as El Marmol. Like all onyx marble, it formed layer by thin layer in springs, in this case cold water springs. Other onyx marbles form in hot springs, too. They can also form as stalactites and stalactites. First quarried around 1893, the El Marmol deposits are about 160 miles southeast of Ensenada and 15 miles from the east coast of the peninsula.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF9900;"> (One additional note. After posting this blog, I was reminded that the onyx in Smith Tower is also called Pedrara Onyx, in reference to the company that owned the quarries.)</span></span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPnkiIdyw5J8Wp8giFXVruIhRBzmr8eYnS1Z_tna4qBzn45oVwu5wbjq4UVU7LwwPR6MFHPxS4bWBiRRDpOacp_EzNdUBj_xsBintGb1-95hG2SALbeMG4KK-ZnuOUqeUDRcphiqPoxsg/s320/marmol041.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574314279858511522" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">The Spring at El Marmol (from the </span><a href="http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/travel/89694-baja-californias-onyx-schoolhouse-cold-water-geyser.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Tacoma World web site</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">El Marmol achieved a bit of fame for its onyx marble schoolhouse, which was supposedly the only all onyx place of education in the world. Apparently the stones were not polished and by at least the 1950s, the weathered stones were drab and brown. As you can see from this modern shot, it’s not in very good shape.</span></span></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHA_QiQ9Z40ljkgfriZD0HbNNA2JTS5_0cpHohcAXv_evOyYxmrDrD-yXSndVYNHzw3C9P8YzftvGaueWR9gL0ZQNyfsoF1rQQ1Bep35Qi_sTqv-lvmRQb0a-zlHNT19yGvMiThr9kt_c/s320/marmol007.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574314273173968530" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">The schoolhouse at El Marmol (from </span><a href="http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/travel/89694-baja-californias-onyx-schoolhouse-cold-water-geyser.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Tacoma World web site</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">When geologist George Perkins Merrill visited the Baja quarries in the early 1890s he found the deposits quite pleasing. “</span></span><i><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Nothing can be more fascinating to the lover of the beautiful in stones than this occurrence, where huge blocks of material of almost ideal soundness, with ever varying shades of color and veination lie everywhere exposed in countless numbers…The colors are peculiarly delicate, and there is a wonderful uniformity in quality…The rose color is, so far as my present knowledge goes, quite unique and wonderfully beautiful.</span></span></i><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">”</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibKvtxaUg40yNIjgZWFVo2f353elzdIKJkatyJff5llTdvhTHIDuxPAX3nl-_Y2frCSNO9hSQMO8G1j1gUuMuR9OFjDRRJjM9Fb-sXzLWbQ04VLrrKzqCQkV3k7UkVOhPfoqzEbbq2cvw/s320/DSC05750.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574315226836708514" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The quarry at El Marmol closed in the early 1960s. An article by naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch theorized that it was due to plastic. He wrote “</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">As with so much that is coming in the world, there is a cheap substitute for something dearer and more beautiful.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">” Fortunately, we can still see the dear and beautiful at Smith Tower.</span></span></div> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJw-bJJtTNnW3Y3ZN_r1sigWbiVlKrJgKPtO_Z9c1HvVQ3Asnw4ER2aG9s4J7YKT36eqrM5s7QrMcuPEF62e9ePrvvQ3DCM6MUGOjxjbnPAK5jZpoq_v3nO0TaCi34GMviTkz6p2ogQUM/s320/DSC05746.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5574315228805589826" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;font-size:small;">Next time, I will look at the Alaskan marble.</span></div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-9057767313470693462011-02-09T08:11:00.001-08:002011-02-09T11:51:32.899-08:00Seattle Stone: Lobby #1<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0MCOPJHL-EwxJJ7LPaiz3Z3p0pK1HCC9cKFVTRk6V_a9ginttA62MgPqCNSSFtt76JlMVP7L_X_zSyD7ZSvq8s8evb2N2DPw9qNaOr5j1CdRcr1E97NYVw_oQasOUBIYUk25TxX9Je8/s1600/DSC05763.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhW0MCOPJHL-EwxJJ7LPaiz3Z3p0pK1HCC9cKFVTRk6V_a9ginttA62MgPqCNSSFtt76JlMVP7L_X_zSyD7ZSvq8s8evb2N2DPw9qNaOr5j1CdRcr1E97NYVw_oQasOUBIYUk25TxX9Je8/s320/DSC05763.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571736509112097010" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I am starting a series looking at buildings in Seattle. I plan to focus initially on some lobbies that I have long liked. My first is the wonderful </span><a href="http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/2010/02/art-deco-stone.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">art deco Exchange Building</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. Ironically finished in 1929, the building, as the name suggests, was supposed to house the Northwest Commodities and Stock Exchange. Most of the elaborate motifs feature items that represented Washington state agriculture. It is a lovely building.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">For many years, I have taken people to the building on my downtown building stone tour and focused on the exterior Morton Gneiss. If we went on a weekday, I would often go inside and show them the extravagant stone, although I had no clue where the stone originated. </span></div><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9ZeOVifLbV6tf5v7eWTVJf9mo9K8GyDjETLb3KRw-55aPZlTnojSJGX7kZ2A6QbtzJt6HajA3JGqYsG2GAUM-wh2QwF71gCmuH2ZdWnnul2T4KRsQOVqIhrUtgy0zGibNZ38TcvXSVHc/s320/DSC05762.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571736841747116850" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 296px; " /><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Recently, I was showing Dave Tucker of </span></span><a href="http://nwgeology.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Northwest Geology Field Trips</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> around Seattle to help him put together a tour for a guidebook he is writing on regional geology. When we stopped at the Exchange Building, his excitement prompted me to try and find out a bit more about the stone. Here's what I learned.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The stone is quarried in Italy near the town of La Spezia, about 14 miles west of the legendary marble quarries of Carrara. The best quarries are on the Tino islands. Initially quarried in the first century and used in religious buildings, the Romans also employed it to pave roads (now that would be wicked cool to see) and in the Luni amphitheater at La Spezia. Quarrying ramped up again after World War II but has slowed down of late. The ancient name was Portovenere and the modern name is Portoro (from <i>Porta oro</i>), with varieties labeled Portoro a macchia larga (large-veined), Portoro di Prima (the best variety), and Portoro a macchia fine (thin-veined). </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Geologically, it is part of the vast sedimentary rocks of the Tuscan nappe. The Late Triassic Portoro Limestone is an aragonite mud deposited on a shallow carbonate platform. It is up to 260 feet and consists of black calcite with alternating layers of mixed dolomite and calcite. The complex folding and reworking of the micritic limestone during Miocene deformation, which also metamorphosed the Carrara marble, produced the distinctive and beautiful stylolitic veining that characterizes the stone. Four- to eight-inch-wide shear zones separate undeformed layers up to eight inches thick.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8wfwdAJY5FVJDy-Jd3jFaF6iwZTuXFD3_l9WN3mfBoADx6DK1ncW6eFrIe9Ofz7i31ZlSLH40i8g7fz7ZOLYXcEuAholx2vBInSIzi67dvCTtPw9xI42UpQEqfxCErh30ePTBN1QMyaw/s320/DSC05767.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571737613879651234" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Sorry for the bad coloring. This stone is black. The purple is light reflected from Cherry wood paneling. </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The black coloring primarily comes from small amounts of organics in anaerobic environments. Limonite and sulfides produce the yellow banding with dolomite mosaics and hematite forming more violet veins.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPKliUxwQHiDYmB-gD0SpPG8oHMZ_Sbqxj7-uHgIvJMFr39K-UJD4vem1JIPVncPLidTDJU29qA-whmQ5JB3umYMHTCNFJAUc0v80FcnyxX8C92idU0XRAFWysdcQyk1mkOito_deL5Ow/s320/DSC05762.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571737609464976690" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 296px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;">The building architect, John Graham Sr., did a splendid job of bookmatching the Portoro panels. He also incorporated Italian travertine and some sort of purple brecciated stone, which I know nothing about. Someday I hope to figure out that part of the story.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-KaIDVxRafeTQmuYQaQZusPPcoj79x9N9TDwbN1pTNX0SQmU9WqZuNCt7LYiNYmEfxlVkinWwkr7hAPwW_8mcYE9wflr1rbIfEHI2B7pTzPv3UDDPuYy50U9bvB6igfITDs32hqUv0VU/s320/DSC05761.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5571737616945952226" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 183px; height: 320px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;">Curiously, the Portoro is a stone of warm places, such as northern Africa and Sicily. When weathered, it loses its brilliance and appears "irreversibly opaque, whitened and corroded," according to one study of it. You can see this in Seattle at the entrance to Shucker's Restaurant on 4th Avenue, just north of Seneca.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Next up will be the elegant lobby of the Smith Tower. </span></div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-23537746928048950872011-02-02T07:16:00.000-08:002011-02-02T07:56:56.376-08:00Louis Kahn and Travertine<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Last night, I watched a fascinating documentary about the iconoclastic architect Louis Kahn. As the title implies, </span><i><a href="http://www.myarchitectfilm.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My Architect: A Son's Journey</span></a></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, follows Kahn's son Nathaniel as he attempts to discover the father he didn't know. Kahn was one of the greatest and most complex architects of the twentieth century. He is best known for his work in the United States, which includes the Kimball Art Museum in Dallas and the Salk Institute in La Jolla. He also designed astounding buildings in </span><a href="http://archnet.org/library/images/thumbnails.jsp?location_id=1525"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bangladesh</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span><a href="http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Institute_of_Public_Admin.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">India</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. What he was less known for was that he had three families, one with his wife and two through long-term affairs. All three produced children. The movie is well worth watching not only for Kahn's fascinating life but also for his stunning architecture.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What I like best about his work is his use of geometric shapes. He punctuates his walls with angles and arches and circles, allowing an ever changing interplay of light and shadow. Each design brings the buildings to life as they change shape throughout the day. His use of geometric shapes also connects his buildings to the landscape, not necessarily in an organic way, but in a way that continues the weaving of the ephemeral and the permanent. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And finally, Kahn appears to have been quite the fan of travertine. His use of it at the Salk Institute foreshadows and seems to have inspired Richard Meier's use of the stone at the Getty Museum. Below are some photos I found on the web that to me are some of the most notable uses of travertine. I hope you'll agree.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZ8io-cSGcUxzENqEzK729LCobYU_7MWHydX44AFLf-FXzQ0URL6fKKl5cCZlUNeN_onXNtwmUDyvl7YU7-NI6PwdiIQ120p178IRzsdGSNzZAEI3Uao1tYO__DYwHs2ynkZZ2qRe_ve4/s400/0197-002-kimbell-art-museum.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569117245884920034" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Kimball Art Museum (from the </span><a href="http://vbaudoin.wordpress.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Southern Live Oak blog</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicoeL0DyqUstpuxsaio9rPCtdRZA3ZyuDlEOoBgx9v7kpSQ29kHQUMhHpUpQ9lEBJp1gTwKR2iGLnFTbb609idEWJ-bzP3Om7uPH3_wkyjsqhut7V8ote4hz8S00dVj3CDPF1-RyEmolU/s400/4199291564_cd3df73991.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569118224152600994" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Kimball Art Museum detail (from </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeff_rosier/4199291564/sizes/m/in/photostream/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">flickr</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixy3jGarDqmRHCZBtcBc6SFk3cvMk0qCJlggUXc7OBLXyrflyyYDSSNMMpT0WGv68t-YYKQaOeXKEwvtHADvkLXMchiIiYKhyLBjZU8cyPIQMmAOq3tSvhQN130LQSYfpWQNYGTeQerbQ/s400/salk01dailyicon.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569119702550208866" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Salk Institute (from </span><a href="http://www.dailyicon.net/2008/07/icon-jonas-salk-institute/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Daily Icon</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK87vztR7lSC3r9DwNcY-mMXDnhIK9EZgNOU9t1g5GxU36C7sZL0lYU0OMzogIxVt-0X-FjuYm0fQoldeoICozvZsUaE0CeUBzNOT3_jB3xbU_8oYv-TZE3IlG3f_sm3P2j41Fg_wSBTM/s400/salk02dailyicon.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569119703235642498" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 262px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Salk Institute details (from </span><a href="http://www.dailyicon.net/2008/07/icon-jonas-salk-institute/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Daily Icon</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcCkK4y2yho2rpgibWPvu9uP2AqpHFne9tGNKu7Tx2_NMg5TYCAGDU8yNLGaFH6zYcnyS1V4ojWoQ3GoR5fXChAvIX2064UOgy5p79FdNQ2W2Zug9kNBOrnysxmLCLJChcAcCS413lxzc/s400/salk-institute-travertine-seats.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569118731661273474" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 291px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Salk Institute seats (from </span><a href="http://www.premiergreenlandscaping.com/Concepts.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Premier Green</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHpxmfG-SCdTyWcB80ABQfua_xy9Pp-7OKF_r3ZP4B8b8m0AHgwqL6AW0BBGDRTewYs5NmWsIlC4jUvE498vCcjlwKJKIm1zGGAYR_3C84Bebr_41WspH1gFSP9cumsEGDE_dBPmUyv4/s400/3162958147_809733d6e1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5569120942257285842" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Yale Museum for British Art (from </span><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/caprilemon/3162958147/sizes/m/in/photostream/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">flickr</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div> </div></div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-44457943712063345812011-01-04T10:02:00.000-08:002011-01-04T10:27:21.243-08:00The Crocodile and the Countertop<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Italian paleontologists have been on a roll of late, and they haven’t even had to go out in the field. Late last year came reports of the </span><a href="http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/2010/11/duomo-and-dinosaur.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">dinosaur in the duomo</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. Now, comes the tale of the countertop crocodile. The new story begins in 1955 in Portomaggiore (Ferrara, Italy), when stonecutter Mr. S. Pasini observed what he thought were fossil bones in a block of yellowish-red limestone destined for a countertop. After the cutting the block into four slabs, Pasini saved the stone. A year later paleontologist Piero Leonardi described the fossil as a cross section of a crocodile he called the “Coccodrillo di Portomaggiore.”</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyHynMHtp3YXW70CMbO8SQzZ5OQc5Lg0Zud3N6WjHmAv6knbQvukRPEVquX5T65yz1uSAJy9LiztmNbN-41iPjgZvpRF4z6FfWe4nvO6YVbmIVHfK5RMDqPAPi7GAFsi9sYObLe4y9J5w/s400/0.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558394097255479698" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 308px; height: 400px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Cross sectioned slabs from Gondwana Research (In Press, available online August 7, 2010) Scale bar = 20cm.</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Two of the slabs eventually ended up at the Museo Geologico Giovanni Capellini in Bologna, where they they sat undisturbed until 2009 when paleontologists Federico Fanti and Andrea Cau studied them. They concluded that Leonardi’s crocodile was a new species and the oldest member of the Metriorhychidae, a diverse and curious group of marine crocodilians, which existed from about 171 to 136 mya. They were fierce, pelagic, piscivorous predators. Fanti and Cau named the new species </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Neptunidraco ammoniticus</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> or “Neptune’s dragon from the Rosso Ammonitico Veronese Formation.” </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-AzCm1aTe5B8BmeYHlVixHS1nA-V1muDnG7JNz4QWBD_q1lN2lJZ4_PoxJvpVBLBfSqu551Z81cungcWJCiUDtlef-jGlSymXx3eUjQtS3fdoeK0IhqKfWPswqRCN7BhQ-yKq1DvoiY/s400/crocodile-kitchen-counter-illustration_30762_200x150.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558394080662102738" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 146px; height: 200px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Neptunidracos</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">' streamlined body, Illustration by Davide Bonadonna</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Neptunidraco</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> is the oldest known member of the Metriorhychidae group and did not look like any modern crocodile. They had streamlined skulls, a vertical tail, and a hydrodynamic body,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">all features well adapted to a marine lifestyle. Cau describes Neptune’s dragon as “more like a dolphin than a croc.” Based on their anatomy and teeth, they ate small, swift fishes. They may have ventured onto land to lay eggs. Later Metriorhynchids were more robust and could have eaten armored fish and large marine reptiles.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQWj3SCz1_2IC87252Vq-Sd8b2-t3uzJHy8X-hceELUiF-wdVULRyhtwKdCvuE0LfFSPp7oBWb0ApW30JqsE7F10M4kZm8aDzMwoC9TQxyThPVfTQFHIr5YG_9N57FlYLybZiKXp-sK1s/s400/Ricercatori-FedericoFanti-AndreaCau-5.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558394090551915458" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 384px; height: 288px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Happy geologists Cau and Fanti (from </span></span><a href="http://theropoda.blogspot.com/2010_11_01_archive.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Cau's blog</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">)</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Rosso Ammonitico, also known as Verona Marble, is a Middle Jurassic age, generally reddish limestone rich in ammonites, hence the name. It formed in deep water as fine grained sediments settled into the Tethys Sea on the margin of Gondwanaland. The specific quarry was near Sant’Ambrogio di Valpolicella, about 10 miles northwest of Verona. (The fossil-rich slabs come from a more yellow part of the quarries, known as “ammonitico giallo.”) Used since Roman times, Rosso Ammonitico can be found at the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Arena in Verona, the Battistero in Parma, the Palazzo Ducale in Venice, the Cathedral in Cremona, and the Galleria V. Emanuele in Milan. (On the VertePaleo list serv, the reporting of this story led to some amusing anti-limestone-countertop comments. When I was in Bloomington, Indiana, working on my chapter on the Salem Limestone, I remember seeing builders touting the limestone countertops of a new rental units. To each his/her own.)</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMHsDsrWCP4YuPGg4rl2p4x_pydfYJQwkbCAQnPehrW6ct-GhY7ayIS7INAha6BxsrdF3r4hg3JoU6oH2IKOCiS-uhopRzyPH03k7g1Ii55H8Lu_R617ly8Nj9oWUIdbwIVlT2J3mr24M/s400/800px-AmmoniteBattisteroParma.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558394107733353410" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></div><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Ammonite from Baptistry (Battistero) of Parma (from Wikicommons)</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span> </span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The publication of the story apparently has ruffled a few feathers in Italy. On </span></span><a href="http://theropoda.blogspot.com/2010/11/neptunidraco-il-principio-di-autorita-i.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Andrea Cau’s blog</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, he notes that one famous Italian geologist offered critical comments on the discovery (saying it wasn’t truly a discovery since the fossil had been known since 1955) and the bigger implication that it provides a new understanding of the evolution of these intriguing marine crocodiles. Cau believes that the conflict results in part from a generational difference and a clash of paradigms, where the young upstarts are willing to reconsider, restudy, and reevaluate past concepts and specimens. He recognizes that their discovery does not change the world but it “is a beautiful piece of a huge mosaic called paleontology.” (Translation from Google Translator.) <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Moreover, isn’t what Cau and Fanti did part of what makes science so appealing and such a valuable way to understand the world around us. We should applaud them for </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">looking carefully, for struggling with understanding what they saw, for asking questions, for drawing new conclusions, and for learning from those who came before</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">. And yes, their new discovery is a thing of beauty.</span></span></p></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-22586961505251993332010-12-10T12:04:00.000-08:002010-12-10T12:15:03.553-08:00Adaptive Quarry Reuse To the North<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As <a href="http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/2010/09/adaptive-reuse-of-quarries-swimming.html">I noted in September</a>, the afterlife of quarries can be varied. Recently I came across one of the more beautiful second lives of a former stone excavation site. This one is on a knoll known historically as Little Mountain and in modern times as Queen Elizabeth Park, in Vancouver, B.C. The quarries were not large and didn’t provide building stone. Instead the rock, a middle Tertiary age basalt, went into some of the earliest roads in Vancouver.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiN2kYBfS817_G7FHXillz4KN95XgdSNlvASYDtjhdLDayiDFuHjoax942lLTI22Lac4EbfvmeUtsIAsdoRVp63caIM5EdUGFOQmvF2EL4Ih-kWs2y__mhwRcloC0wMeszjSVQoeB6_tCk/s400/DSC05644.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549147530143664306" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The larger of the two quarries. </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Originally owned by Canada Pacific Railway, the site had been logged around 1890. The quarry, actually two small quarries, was abandoned by 1911, leaving behind a nasty gash on Vancouver’s highest spot. As so often happens in the wet PNW, plants took over the holes and few visited, but in 1928 the city of Vancouver acquired the hilltop and surrounding lands. A visit by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth prompted the area to be renamed in her honor. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2iJ-3A4ELi0jFZkO82y2-cElmRiuuYizbO5kgUHktnA8qEzZY4-uQLWEeoI4dCeOySobl4ibKLYUvw5DPl4fnkajbExiWKpP40Ip6x7MbbzdYny3BogM5zO4MxBn4lnfzxgkCxcduy2I/s400/DSC05645.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549147540561537202" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Good detail of steps in quarry showing the plug and feather method of stone quarrying</span>.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Little happened in the subsequent decade or during World War II but in 1948 park deputy superintendent William Livingstone began to clear and clean the quarries. Here is the description of what he did from the <a href="http://vancouver.ca/parks/parks/queenelizabeth/history.htm">Vancouver Parks</a> web</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">site. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span></p><span style="line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is nearly legend at the Park Board how this self-taught individual, the son of one of Vancouver's first nurserymen, designed the new park landscape plan. Retired employees tell how the lanky figure of the Deputy Park Superintendent could be seen on-site, from dawn to dusk, directing numerous bulldozers to reshape the scarred earth, not working from drawings, but from a clear vision in his mind. Rather than reclaim the gullies left by the quarry operation, he used them as backdrop for choice plants, trees and shrubs, and for the placement of his best designs-water features.</span></blockquote></span><o:p></o:p></span><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family: Verdana;mso-bidi-font-family:Verdana;font-size:11.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxhaefOaXQBkgnPGi61pfbgxysoiz-L5-bv4bslCSAsFBl2D9Xw2O49YTkfkNbCbKqiVX4jkUh1wGo45RN_Kg7wnvymBzBQ1IBHvhCEgtYkJ95HSoCu1EUlPu-esRZZl7SjhS-aqM46aQ/s400/DSC05649.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549147547092343106" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The smaller of the two arboreta.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The first, and larger quarry opened as an arboretum in 1953 and the second one in 1961. To build the arboreta, Livingstone blasted out pools, dynamited old walls, and brought in gravel and soil. As you see from the photos they are quite beautiful with a waterfall, lush foliage, and quiet greens. They must be even more spectacular when the flowers are in bloom. The park is also well worth visiting for the panoramas of Vancouver and the distant mountains. And finally, for an historic perspective on Little Mountain, <a href="http://vancouver.ca/parks/parks/queenelizabeth/history.htm">read these reminiscences published in 1952</a>.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <span style="font-family:"New York";mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwEcByDPiJkYGDv_YAW6GgvRkRwD9ai-XNj5YTwR3mL4o8GIBgiVRl_bTw4NhNcRBYPqkMkRazdm5SJUFi_LBRKoT-Kg4W1YxdKPfwcXd5jCPhWCTihpLjZJ-9suggGXojjDZgBmY-oXE/s400/DSC05643.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5549147526464084930" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px; " /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:"New York";mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;">A waterfall in the larger site.</span></span></span></div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-1623377955315061552010-11-23T10:33:00.000-08:002010-11-23T11:01:38.037-08:00Written in Stone, a review and interview<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQO0xCD78BHUTx9wo5_ITw1tJpi6dAApFfAFGRv9cYUrUKZ4Txf_BmoAVyoGIFmRwSD6jWCH6zirQFL5Mpf-TucmXWXnnEJ8Ju71oaOeNIwwZ8naMgSQm5A1o9CRvRiQ8_M4wL6sMd_M/s1600/phpv0HHUYAM.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQO0xCD78BHUTx9wo5_ITw1tJpi6dAApFfAFGRv9cYUrUKZ4Txf_BmoAVyoGIFmRwSD6jWCH6zirQFL5Mpf-TucmXWXnnEJ8Ju71oaOeNIwwZ8naMgSQm5A1o9CRvRiQ8_M4wL6sMd_M/s320/phpv0HHUYAM.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542817483759260274" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">To paraphrase the old saw, everyone talks about evolution but no one does anything about it. Well, Brian Switek decided to do something, at least he decided to write a book about evolution. </span><i><a href="http://brianswitek.com/books/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature</span></a></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">clearly shows how evolution has operated on Earth for billions of years. In doing so, Switek hammers one more nail in the Creationist coffin and provides a thoughtful account for any who want to learn more about evolution, fossils, and the cultural history of evolution. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Switek, who blogs for </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Wired</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> magazine at </span><a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/laelaps"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Laelaps</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and the</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Smithsonian</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">’s </span><a href="http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/dinosaur/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dinosaur Tracking</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, takes a two-fold approach. Primarily, he focuses on the fossils and what they tell us but he also weaves in the people who have studied those fossils. This approach allows him to give readers connective tissues to the science. After all, it is far easier to understand the science when you are also following the fascinating personalities connected to the research. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What makes his book valuable is that he not only weaves in history, providing descriptions of sometimes overlooked characters and their contributions, as well as the main players, but he also brings the science into the present with up-to-date accounts of some of the biggest discoveries of recent years. You come away with a better understanding of how science and scientists work and how science is not a black-and-white field but multi-hued with many interpretations. Furthermore, he shows how scientists do not operate in a void and do respond to the culture around them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Switek is clearly enthusiastic and passionate about evolution and the fossil record. He has thought long and hard about how to tell his stories and how each helps us see another facet of evolution. At times he is a bit dense with scientific names and details (I think this is due in part to his excitement for the subject; he is bursting with information and can't help wanting to share it) but for the most part Switek keeps his stories moving along, constantly showing us the beauty of evolution and how scientists made and continue to make stunning discoveries that flesh out the many stories of life on Earth. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b>Brian was kind enough to answer a few questions I posed to him. They give a good impression of his writing style and his deep passion for the wonders of science.</b></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">1. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You cover many intriguing people as you delve into the history of paleontology. If you could meet any of the historical people you write about, who would it be?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPLBetjGPayqeNReUDR1oA8vK0aJpbJRLmzPunMjF1ObWoQ-P-1O5K8RM0kWFpISvnyGCJkGCMNFFJkuyz2UOMg2vJyimZ5QR3n1U884rFVJYAB0S0rwjGUyaXnWXjFwuSTWdmp1GOZd8/s200/3855351027332957.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542816240745201410" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 124px; height: 200px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thomas Henry Huxley. Everyone knows him as “Darwin’s Bulldog,” but as I dug into his work I was impressed by the quality of his writing and how he was one of the first to popularize evolutionary transitions in the fossil record (most notably the origin of birds from dinosaur-like creatures, whales from terrestrial ancestors, and horses from small mammals). </span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">2. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What would you ask them?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I would love to know more about his quibbles with natural selection; why did he prefer large-scale leaps and why did he propose that many evolutionary transitions took place during non-geologic time? And what made him eventually shift his interests from paleontology to lab-based anatomical studies later in this career? Rather than just pelt him with questions, though, I think it would be fun to update Huxley on what we have learned since his day. I think he would be enthusiastic about the discovery of feathered dinosaurs, especially since he tried to imagine what such a creature would look like over a century before the first ones (excluding <i>Archaeopteryx</i>) were found!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">3. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If you could see in time lapse photography any of the evolutionary events you discuss, which one would it be? </span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The evolution of the first birds from feathered dinosaurs. Definitely. We have learned so much about the origins of birds in the past 10 years alone, yet there is still much we don’t know. To put it another way, it is fantastic that we have been able to identify so many avian characteristics in dinosaurs, but those traits are so old and widespread that pinpointing the origin of the first birds is still relatively problematic (even if we know feathered, raptor-like dinosaurs were their ancestors). Plus, on purely aesthetic grounds, I think a photo time-lapse of the origin of birds would be absolutely beautiful given the colorful plumage the animals in question probably had.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">4. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If you could have been there to find the first fossils of the animals you discuss, which one would you have wanted to discover? </span></span></b></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbhYRUmg3jvpJa8XwtBrCzvGf4HkhB74d_VOW-DPu_vfPbtMzu8IrrVa37H_VFhRC79kG3dpuFaPp8tXT2D3hFdu5ydOnhu4jZRIY_bpz51xw8z3xFNR61S_qwDTyyfwMi9aQWY5P_Zuc/s320/PDGanthtodoruskel.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5542816945108057522" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 320px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Probably <i>Rodhocetus</i>, <i>Maiacetus</i>, or one of the other whales in the middle of the transition from land to sea (after terrestrial whales like <i>Pakicetus</i>, but before fully-aquatic ones such as <i>Basilosaurus</i>). They are just so wonderfully strange! I can’t think of anything else like them. By the time they were discovered there was already enough context to know that they were early whales, but I am fascinated by the fact that they are virtually caught in the middle of this evolutionary transition where they had a whole suite of traits related to aquatic life but still could have moved about on land. <o:p></o:p></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(</span><a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gingeric/PDGwhales/Whales.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">drawing from Phillip Gingerich web site</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">)</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">5. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What do you think that modern paleontologists can learn from their predecessors?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Always be mindful of what is still unknown. One of the things which became clear as I documented what we have learned about each of the transitions I discussed was how many times evolutionary trees have been redrawn and major transitions have been reinterpreted. The paradox of the fossil record is that it is amazing rich but frustratingly incomplete. Even though we are tempted to fit everything into these neat little conceptual boxes there is still much left to be discovered. This doesn’t mean that we’re going to have trash everything we think we know now – I think we have a more comprehensive view of the fossil record than ever before – but we should take care when we start saying “X species was ancestral to Y species, and that shows that the transition happened like this.” That’s fine as presented as a hypothesis, but what if species Z turns out to fit in that gap and species Y represents part of a diversification which left no descendants? That sort of thing has happened before, and in talking about paleontology to the public I think we should always distinguish between the facts of the fossil record and what we are inferring from them. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">6. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What is the central point about science that you learned from your research and writing?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That the history of life on earth has been stranger and more wonderful than anyone could have imagined. Who could have imagined something like <i>Pakicetus</i> or even something as familiar as an <i>Apatosaurus</i> had they not heard of them first? And things just keep getting weirder. Having just returned from the annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in Pittsburgh, PA, I can tell you that the more we dig into the fossil record, the stranger prehistoric life becomes. Evolution is not some mundane, straightforward march of lowly little creatures to impressive beasts. It is a wildly branching process which has been cut back by extinction multiple times and has led to the origin of innumerable creatures which have no living counterpart. I appreciated this on a superficial level when I started by research, but the deeper I dug into the science the more I was left in awe of the fossil record. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">7. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What surprised you most in your research?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">How much quirks of history played into the development of scientific thought. The distant reach of European empires, for example, allowed naturalists to travel to far-off places which otherwise would have been inaccessible, and racist notions about the origins of humans prevented anthropologists from investigating the strata of Africa for human ancestors. Imagine what our understanding of evolution would be like today if scientists had stumbled upon the rich beds of feathered dinosaurs from China much earlier; nearly a century’s-worth of debate about bird origins might have been tossed out. Just as the history of life is marked by contingency, so is the history of science.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">8. </span><b><span style="color:#E36C0A;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And finally, what did you leave out that you wished you could have put in the book?</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent:.5in;line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I had originally written a short summary of primate evolution for the human evolution chapter, but that part of the book was overlong already and I had to lose it. It was painful to do – especially since human evolution is almost never placed into the wider context of primate evolution – but given space constraints I didn’t have much of a choice. I was able to partially make up for it by talking about <i>Darwinius</i> and other early primates in the introduction, but I still wish that I could have gone into a little more depth about early anthropoids, Miocene apes, and other fossil primates.</span></span></p> <p class="indentstyle"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:150%; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="indentstyle"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:150%; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="indentstyle"><span style="mso-bidi-line-height:150%; font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-Times New Roman"font-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="indentstyle"><o:p> </o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'New York';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 72px; font-size: -webkit-xxx-large;"><br /></span></span>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-36270854860597987962010-11-12T08:48:00.000-08:002010-11-12T09:07:20.260-08:00Beinecke Library, Green Stamps, and Marble<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For much of the middle 1900s consumers coveted sheets of little green stamps. Known as S&H Green Stamps, they came in a variety of point values and could be redeemed for household items. Now mostly forgotten, the popularity of S&H stamps led to one of the great uses of marble as a building stone, when in 1960, the Beinecke family, owners of the Sperry and Hutchinson company, decided to donate the money for a rare book library at Yale.</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1cF3-MLvrkYBIN_1oV20r6t6_8MY7DllQ0FLXTZIStbEv9EBGdcmaHM2vA7ASL9C5qg2MozFy0kgVpRzwPZz-qpCjmjI47_4t1jcJo5nToYl6P4j6UHXMjz5-BvWX8wwPIRJCr4K21BQ/s400/Bunshaft_Yale2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538706411154089794" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 326px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;">Gordon Bunshaft and the Beinecke, from </span></span><a href="www.som.com/content.cfm/gordon_bunshaft_interview"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3366FF;">SOM web site</span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yale hired Gordon Bunshaft of the firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, who proposed what he called a “treasure house” for books. It would have to mix storage, offices, exhibit space, and reading room. It would also have to be secure, equipped with climate control, and not allow direct sunlight to hit the books. Bunshaft’s initial plan was to use onyx, which he had seen at a palace in Istanbul. Specifically he liked how light infused an onyx-walled bathroom in a harem. (Not till later did he learn that those walls were made of alabaster.)</span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">For two years, Bunshaft searched for onyx. He even tried to get the stone during a revolt in French-controlled Algeria, which involved contacting the American ambassador in France to see if the French would send troops to access an onyx quarry. As he noted in a later interview “we eventually gave up on onyx.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">They decided to go for marble but even then Bunshaft had troubles. For example, marble from the quarries that provided stone for the Acropolis “looked characterless, like a lampshade,” and that wouldn’t do. Finally an old man from Vermont told him about marble from a quarry in Danby, Vermont. The stone wasn’t perfect. It was a “last, desperate thing…too strongly veined when you see sunlight coming through inside. It’s too yellow and black.” But it would do.</span></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOBcXBe3dpGxIluecEJX75QGedOYXjKD-hJxNFXaqvtrfSQh1vrLtq31fvbywQIHCcDsmXlzIRbPWuwEEXLMpRBdR05y-xarkyDVTkXtRUfpeLIpM6N18SZWZVL5rp_roDhiKv9hLpTCQ/s400/bldg_slide_11.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538706411340530818" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 258px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Interior light, Photo by Richard Cheek, from </span><a href="www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/brblinfo/brblslides_tour.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Beinecke Library web site</span></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Each panel measures 54 x 54 inches and is 1.25 inches thick. Frames of light gray granite from Vermont hold the marble panes in place. The Danby marble is one of several varieties of Shelburne marble, which formed from metamorphism during the Early Ordovician Taconic Orogeny. Other trade names include Royal, Imperial, and Dorset.</span></p> <span style="line-height:150%;font-family:"New York"; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: normal; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx69dPLs5ApU6TeRepBMKyVAglm9u1ez8f82z4G0TuKyu4NFAk0szDSko7Mq2qTnVTCzqIE5KlJTMTEXxP6VeUKGIg6GQB6g8s9-8B0yk4_Zr1VRUs2LO1TN5lc3G2fQcJ17qyQoBR8OE/s400/bldg_slide_04.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5538706397392458146" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 258px; " /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="line-height:150%;font-family:"New York"; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman";mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US; mso-fareast-language:EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; line-height: normal; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Exterior close up of marble, Photo by Richard Cheek, from </span><a href="www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/brblinfo/brblslides_tour.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Beinecke Library web site</span></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 150%; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I was lucky enough to visit the library several years ago. Although the exterior is a bit dull, warm light suffuses the interior. I disagree with Mr. Bunshaft, I like the richness of the amber hues of the stone. I didn’t know whether to be more awed by the wonderful books, such as a Gutenberg Bible, or the wonderful stone. If you do have the time, I highly recommend visiting the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale. </span></span></span><br /><!--EndFragment--> </div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-42700704550780903562010-11-02T08:28:00.001-07:002010-11-05T08:22:41.386-07:00The Duomo and the Dinosaur: Not?<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Finally we have a nice uniting of science and religion and boy has it titillated the Internet. Apparently for the past 350 years or so the fine parishioners of the Cathedral of St. Ambrose (aka Sant’Ambrogio) in Vigevano, Italy, have been praying and genuflecting with a dinosaur fossil in their midst, or so says paleontologist Andrea Tintori. The fossil has been right in their sight, in fact just to the left of the center of their altar, though there are a few skeptics who doubt Tintori's observations. (read further)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0r0KlqiWPWzQKpYVUZ4VDxnOKZV_FQSPbJLsWIAI1_-q7uTetuUoK5f4zIfLEffsrSjwJYrx5KQs3P11wn2bDw2AKFhE9IbwMZbwJBuyHiEs-7IEHP7UDN9p6ebOd9FUGtII-cMamncA/s400/6a00d8341bf67c53ef01348883c01c970c-800wi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534974885602010178" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 268px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Photo from </span><a href="http://news.discovery.com/dinosaurs/dinosaur-skull-found-in-church.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Discovery News</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">, courtesy of Andrea Tintori</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">University of Milan paleontologist Tintori has determined that the early Jurassic age (~190mya)-stone slab contains the cross section of a dinosaur skull with visible nasal cavities and numerous teeth. Total length is about 12 inches. Tintori also found a second part of the skull in another slab. He hopes to get the first slab removed to do additional work.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAAU8Yxw_KZbUYKjKcGwARQ-NvBRTFyBvbsL0FOF75Ixfl8T_nLhFRg54oZ9FMGzYATidzBGkcYcSd9tsqyXcC7TGuVby8NDpP7WtLVjBHFJ2IdZg3tO0qlvPHWCQKdB97owRCbqX8j9A/s400/6a00d8341bf67c53ef0133f563d0aa970b-800wi.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534974872629973442" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 298px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Photo from </span><a href="http://news.discovery.com/dinosaurs/dinosaur-skull-found-in-church.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">Discovery News</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;">, courtesy of Andrea Tintori</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Built between about 1532 and 1660, the cathedral, or duomo in Italian, contains a wide array of stone. The fossil-rich slab comes from quarries in Arzo, Switzerland, about 40 miles due north of Vigevano. They were first opened in the thirteenth century but didn’t become widely used till the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the stone was used primarily for altars. It is a purple-red, grey-veined limestone with skeletal grains of crinoids and goes by various names but broccatello (brocaded) is the most common. (I wonder why builders wanted this stone for altars. Is there something about its color and pattern that conveys a message suitable to getting closer to God?)</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The broccatello became popular as a replacement for the legendary Portasanta stone of Rome, the rock used for the Holy Door (Porta santa) of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Builders often combined the Arzo stone with red and grey limestone from Bergamo, black limestone from Lake Como, and white marble from the Apuan Alps. You can see the broccatello throughout Italy and Switzerland. No other dinosaur fossils have been reported.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">In regard to Tintori's dinosaur, one person I corresponded with wrote back. “ALERT: this seems to be a cross-section of an ammonite!” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">After my initial posting, I received one more note about the fossil.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> "</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Ammonites are well known from the Broccatello Formation, which is entirely marine and devoid of terrigenous sediment derived from the continent. The Broccatello preserves a rich fauna of marine fossils, sponges, sea lilies, brachiopods, bryozoans, solitary corals and the like and has been deposited in waters near the base of the photic zone [down to 600 feet]. The preservation looks also typical for an ammonite. The test [or shell], originally composed of the mineral aragonite, an unstable form of calcium carbonate would have been dissolved and the void filled by calcite, the stable mineral form of calcium carbonate. The photograph is not good enough to see the crystal fabric of the calcite, but I have no doubt about my diagnosis. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF9900;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If this is the head of a dinosaur, I'll give up geology and eat my rock hammer." </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Perhaps the sexiness of finding a dinosaur in a church made Tintori see more than meets the eye.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <span style="font-family:Georgia;mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKNJnxd7mm-xYkksOicg9jMpyyQE9EfCwO74Ywp-7jtUVNLn8aCK3DCKzNaXVJq-SA5clc6hM9_IxNnoL6Ros_Bll-9czb-s1L9rejrZx5e26LGZWZD9iXaXI_avp1RAy8YVhRlKWBV2I/s400/Oxytropidoceras_roissyanum.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5534974866792580434" style="text-align: left;display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; cursor: pointer; width: 123px; height: 337px; " /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If you read the comments on various sites reporting this story, you will see that many note the irony of a catholic church having a fossil in it. Hundreds of church buildings are fossil rich so this isn’t really a new irony to report in regard to religion and evolution. I can only hope though it will get more people to take notice of the stone in their religious institutions, which seems to me to be one of the best reasons I can think of for visiting a church, synagogue, or mosque.</span></span>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-81196300961071506572010-10-27T12:35:00.000-07:002010-10-27T12:58:44.587-07:00Lions and Tigers and Walruses, Oh my!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Do you ever have the feeling that you are being watched when you stroll through downtown streets?</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You are probably right.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hundreds of eyes peer out from buildings tracking your actions.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">These observers are neither human nor electronic.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Instead, a host of animals watches you.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A tour of any urban core reveals a veritable Noah’s Ark’s worth of carved and molded animals stalking your every step. <o:p></o:p></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Since I live in Seattle, I will share some of the beasts gracing our buildings.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Times Square building (414 Stewart) is a good place to begin a downtown wildlife safari.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> B</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">uilt in 1916, during the height of popularity for endowing buildings with animals, the wedge shaped structure sports 61 lion’s heads and 18 eagles.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You might not notice them at first glance since none are lower than the fifth story.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Keep in mind that this high elevation placement of wildlife typifies many structures.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Because of their symbolism as powerful, victorious, and noble animals, lions and eagles dominate the architectural menagerie.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Six massive eagles stare out from the uppermost corners of the Washington Athletic Club and another half dozen with their wings outspread grace the Eagles Auditorium.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If you look carefully, you can find more lions in Seattle than on the plains of Nigeria.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Sixty feline heads loom out of the Seaboard Building (Fourth</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and Pike) while a parking garage at 1915 Second</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Avenue has a lion in profile.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">You can even see lions toting fruit at 1221 Second</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Avenue and find a zoological conundrum with a pride of lion reigning 14 stories up on the Alaska Building (Second</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and Cherry), which was Seattle’s first steel-framed skyscraper.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Animal ornamentation peaked between 1890 and 1940 in the heyday of terra cotta cladding in Seattle.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Following Seattle’s Great Fire of 1889, architects turned to terra cotta as a cheap, light-weight, fireproof medium.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In addition, because terra cotta was a molded clay block or brick, animals could be mass produced easily.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Only four companies dominated the local industry and many downtown beasts probably originated from the same mold.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Architects often used animals to relay information about the building’s use.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Over 20 dolphins adorn architect B. Marcus Priteca’s historic Crystal Swimming Pool (now the Crystal Pool skyscraper) at Second</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and Lenora, while a horse head protrudes out of what was the Pike Place Market Livery Stable (2200 Western Ave.)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeNXaUiWX03nahIjlEj2-jFJMfCFicGTATCVnPuFMY5Lt2HQryoAzCqN4S_CJ-2VtX2FurQwANA0qR4Q0P3_VTJ4TC0XvHYs7MuNOhVgznEaSdy1ULksLE99yi45IT1MqpHAF0b5bDZBs/s400/Seattle_-_Cristalla_09A.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532813561577201682" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 246px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And, of course, the best known of these motifs is found at Third and Cherry, where a phalanx of walrus heads decorate the Arctic Building, built in 1916 by Seattle’s first round of instantly rich folk to provide a suitable locale to banter about tales of the north.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">I have been told that t</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">he original walrus heads displayed ivory tusks and that city officials removed them after the 1949 earthquake when one fell. I have never been able to verify this and hoped that in sharing this story someone might reply with additional information.</span>)</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The tusks were remodeled after that quake. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The most recent renovation, in 1997, returned the walruses to their original splendor, with terra cotta tusks.</span></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZjLACspwo41IK93StGAwNEVQ7O4ofUwZhj089RgAZJ-V9MKBNQtVjnyuh8zBc0Ump6GAuhl50bBGIaA4cZ-GsAgI2CUVjKvzPKqky19T71TnCz2xXQHFQ-xdmBTDbp1cY8WPd2GI3F_k/s400/800px-Seattle_-_Arctic_Building_-_walrus_04.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532813563317857154" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 266px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Other animals found downtown include a metal bison, wolf, and bighorn sheep on planters at the base of the west side of what was the WaMu tower.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Two goats and one cougar, as well as a pair of sheep and lions watch you enter the old Federal Building.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Priteca also decorated the Coliseum Theater (Fifth </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">and Pine) with 47 bull heads, festooned in bucolic splendor with pomegranates and grapes.</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK6UAXVnCbOQEwfEjg9Fdpgi0Us8dguSIYcwaCXF11keTq5eToN4WePeTY5aDPN5hmvimfUEkPiMEBTTTiJjbdKIUF430tSzYlAZMPgvH4hyP2ul6f3B0entIKOoZ86Xiwhy_zGs5wJ_8/s400/06_Coliseum_Theatre_3.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5532813548275438402" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 171px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The old Chamber of Commerce building (215 Columbia St.), constructed in 1924, houses Seattle’s most diverse collection of real and mythical beasts.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Two pelicans, a duck, and the ubiquitous eagle along with a gazelle, deer, bears, dolphins, and rams share space with two griffins and two hippocamps, a mythical beast with the forelegs of a horse and the tail of a dolphin.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Poseidon and his wife supposedly rode these sea horses. In regard to the griffins, </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: small; ">supposedly back in the day, a few folks called Seattle the Venice of America. Why anybody thought that, I haven't a clue, but griffins are the symbol of Venice.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 24px; font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This structure was one of the final Seattle buildings elaborately embellished with wildlife.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">By the late 1930s, Modernism’s stark, brutish, unornamented surfaces had replaced the ornate style of terra cotta.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now, animals on Seattle buildings are only found in relict preserves.</span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Happy hunting, no matter where you live.</span></span></p>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-58677806500789573142010-10-19T07:24:00.000-07:002010-10-19T08:25:44.117-07:00The Tweed Courthouse Stone<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It is always fun to come across a bit of corruption and shenanigans in the stone trade. Today, I want to focus on what was one of the most famous building stones of New York City, Tuckahoe Marble. First quarried around 1820, the Tuckahoe outcrops in northern Manhattan, the Bronx, and Westchester County, home of the quarries. The dolomitic marble comes from the Inwood Marble, a 450-million-year-old stone that metamorphosed during the formation of the Appalachians.</span></span></div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 377px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYtzJIAapI9WUveSKdVrPSiblGeODEOWibPZiRdTUDP2Dgv3rsyz91p3_uoG0jP_sMDV7f6uPOQJ0qfibQ7ENprVLJn0RHP0kUmZKYtNFNVA-3skFZsei7vBrpB_d6pfUNRdeTUumj4Tc/s400/assay4.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529763226571661858" /> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">U.S. Assay Office NYC, formerly New Branch of the Bank of U.S. (</span><a href="http://www.andrewcusack.com/2007/10/03/the-assay-office/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">found on this web site</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One of the earliest uses for Tuckahoe was in the New York branch of the Bank of the United States. Designed by Martin E. Thompson, the building became the US Assay Office in 1853 and in the early 1900s was the oldest federal structure in NYC. Such fame, however, didn’t save it from destruction in 1915. Curiously, the Tuckahoe façade was re-erected in Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Tuckahoe also achieved great fame in 1846 when Alexander T. Stewart, who would become one of New York’s wealthiest men, opened the city’s first large department store. Designed by the wonderfully named firm of Trench and Snook, the massive store was faced in Tuckahoe marble and quickly earned the moniker the “Marble Palace.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Stewart also built a huge mansion with the marble, which unfortunately did not benefit the owner of the Tuckahoe quarry. According to the February 25, 1899 American Architect and Building News: “</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Mr. Stewart made a contract with the owner of the quarry, fixing a heavy penalty, amounting, practically, to the forfeiture of the quarry itself, for delay in delivery, beyond a specified time, of the marble. The delivery was delayed beyond the time, and Mr. Stewart determined to enforce the forfeiture. According to the story which was current in our younger days, the owner of the quarry went to Mr. Stewart to plead for mercy, but found him obdurate, and, overcome by grief and excitement, fell dead before him.”</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHUCBP6smr8yMNae6aA0Vl5MiItQ-pv_JC9iRqKZ47XpcwxrvM4votfcO6LlcQ31qrbbDEDs5pbJ4vRFVvcpBtm_ZlTR_8hOnqS59UjUff9jN5OaOAygmFNVXQ_V4uXpgUvpqAmGOqX8E/s320/Boss_Tweed,_Nast.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529776847290725538" style="float: right; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 295px; height: 320px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Now to the corruption. Our story begins in 1861 with the construction of the county courthouse in New York City. The original budget was $250,000. As happens in many good civic projects, the builders decided to work with local stone, in this case the Tuckahoe marble. But this was the era of William "Boss" Tweed, a man who took corruption, bribery, and payouts to new heights. As he gathered more and more control over New York, Tweed made the County Courthouse into a money mill for himself and his cronies. For example, carpenter George S. Miller received $360,751 for one month of work; "Prince of Plasterers" Andrew Garvey got $2,870,464.06 for his efforts; and one company owned by Tweed charged $170,727 for chairs, all 40 of them. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In 1864, Tweed and pals purchased a marble quarry in Sheffield, Massachusetts for $3,080. Initially, the country ordered $1,200 worth of stone, which by 1867 had somehow morphed to costing $120,000. Over the years of construction, the county shelled out at least $420,000 for new, uncut marble for the courthouse. The courthouse was eventually completed in 1881, at a </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">total cost of $12 million.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaTthQxsoQvxlQTro1zd5hFV7eB9jzbanY_hriDKSXFv9-hO7dwyGAv-FB_A-pWYDo1hj_R1TltHvX6zDCjBH6VP03REprFjrjeIPAkPGdm8Ws_KVgfiSPzAsF4Km_5gKsuhw-Pc_MPKc/s400/man_tweed1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5529777115476086642" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 193px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Over a century later, a decision was made to restore the courthouse. The initial study found that about 8 to 10 percent of the stone needed to be replaced. Most of the stone for restoration came from Georgia but workers also located 125 marble blocks in the Sheffield quarries. They had been slated for use in the Washington Monument (only four rows of Sheffield are in the obelisk, sandwiched between <a href="http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/search/label/Texas%20marble">Texas</a> and Cockeysville marbles) but after Tweed was convicted of wrong doing, no one wanted the stone. Now they are back in New York, apparently at true market cost.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-65543652560530550172010-09-24T07:52:00.000-07:002010-09-25T07:06:59.066-07:00Adaptive Reuse of Quarries: Swimming, Climbing, and Filming<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Like cats, many quarries have multiple lives, or at least continue to be used long after people have pulled out stone for buildings. My most recent reminder of this was an article in one of Seattle’s local newspapers. The </span></span><a href="http://www.seattlepi.com/local/426994_INDEX19.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">story described how the Index quarry</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, which Swedish immigrant John Soderberg opened in 1904, had been purchased and protected by the local rock climbing community.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Index granite, technically a granodiorite, was an important building material in Seattle in the early part of the twentieth </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">century. Soderberg took advantage of the proximity of the Great Northern Railway tracks to ship the stone. It went primarily into curbs and foundations, including my favorite building in Seattle, Smith Tower, but like many a local stone, its luster soon faded, other stones came into the market, and quarry closed down by the mid 1930s. And then the quarry was forgotten until rock climbers discovered it as a great climbing area close to Puget Sound.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Hundreds of climbing routes were put up over the years, much on private land, as well as some in Forks of the Sky State Park. Luckily for the climbers, the private owner, as well as the state parks department, were supportive of the climbers but that support may not have lasted so the Washington Climbers Coalition decided to buy the climbing wall site. On August 25, they completed the purchase of the property and named it the Stimson Bullitt Climbing Reserve.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">This is not the only adaptive reuse of abandoned quarries. While working on my book, <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF0000;">Stories in Stone</span></i>, I came across several similar sites. The </span></span><a href="http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/metroboston/quincyquarries.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">great granite quarry of Quincy</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, supplier of stone for the Bunker Hill Monument and numerous structures on the east coast, is also a favorite urban climbing area.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiPyRDqnBPl1Vhq4BOQ4ipw01nvNDZi_DtvZxRGfyHh2gSSgUdDfI2zOLJ2EP54CLdu5_IOJHqlXyFnw_BHOdZS1F2_6Tej0y84s0E3RkbYyknIAxQRVtrjy-_DWZlL6MGf2soM7JwGwU/s400/2006-01-16_11-32-43-57.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520508163154959810" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Perhaps the most famous ex-quarry is the one that starred in the movie <i>Breaking Away</i>. After the quarry flooded, it became a popular swimming site. When <i>Breaking Away</i> came out, so many people sought out the quarry that the owners regretted that they ever let the filmmakers shoot there. Access to the quarry is now discouraged, prohibited, and forbidden.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMADNW6HSsOdiHN7HrHSmFFqnNenlkk_pQsF61H5fHHr5z5uDfgATTGbZoN22e6vfVLDThISC3Rs07s3AApN_Jf1LT68ZaPkQ1sA1NFFG2tqmCvWzWHmxbF_9tRLgX7av-mNYzbFtEEgc/s400/Breaking+Away+poster+1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520508150773682562" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 400px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Portland, Connecticut's fabulous brownstone quarry also flooded, initially when the nearby Connecticut River overflowed into 200-foot-deep hole. Later, a hurricane pushed water back into the quarry and closed it permanently. The property had been slated for development--the plan called for cutting a channel to the river and opening a marina--but then the real estate market crashed. The city of Portland bought the property in 1999 and it was designated a National Historic Landmark the following year. At present, the </span><a href="http://brownstonepark.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">quarry and site have been opened for a variety of adventure activities</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, including snorkeling, mountain biking, and zip lines. I am not sure such use truly honors the people who worked the quarry and supplied stone for buildings from Boston to San Francisco but it is a creative use of the land. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 24px; font-family:'New York';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiXaSCptcd2tYc3Qd_ZgG4DxPumHY9oTxamvZEO9uR9i7gKqwNuSSwJQhH1iBHqgxm2j8Ag0pndY7HPrwBNXSEidjSKfHPhSXkBSDFESgl-HDfPEAwDBIvhWqd6pnY0BPzjOHHhCtGrAo/s400/DSCN0079.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5520508166428211250" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span></span></p><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">P.S. Just got a short note from Dave Tucker at <a href="http://nwgeology.wordpress.com/">NW Geology Field Trips</a> that reminded me of one other swimming pool quarry. Here is what Dave wrote: "The public pool in Tenino, WA, occupies the old quarry south of downtown. It is c</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#3333FF;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">losed for the season now. Some water runs through a pipe above the quarry to form a waterfall into the pool. </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-family:georgia;font-size:small;">I talked with a local high school kid who was sneaking a smoke by the pool, he said it is ‘hundreds and hundreds of feet deep’. I thought he was just smoking tobacco, but after that comment, not so sure. Just east of the pool area is a stack of big sandstone blocks with splitting holes visible on the edges. All stacked up to form a maze and play area."</span></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-82882433336209667012010-09-15T08:30:00.000-07:002010-09-15T08:41:04.641-07:00Moab's Building Stone: Questions Remain<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ah, Moab, My Moab. For the first time, I decided to see what I could find out about the local building stone. I hadn’t noticed the stone much during the nine years that I lived there in late 1980s and early 1990s. Why would I? I had the most stunning rocks in the world to look at all around me. Now that I am older and wiser, I looked more closely at the few buildings of rock in the land of red rocks.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The best known building of stone is Star Hall. The locals used red rock, what those in the east call brownstone. At present, Star Hall is used for plays, concerts, films, and the like. It is a simple, yet elegant design with a gambrel-style roof and arched windows. Some have called the building Richardsonian Romanesque though it lacks the true rough hewn nature of blocks that I associate with that style but then I am not an architectural historian.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinmkBlGd6r21B-4T09D7uARwn9vbgofAhknnCJYgFu-FDa5s0NPLO6ClJqug3a9bExm5VVc1a8KvHMpMbdefF15MNucKzwFup4djIATjDz5buzTRKXDaH1zgQqVf7w_pf1NBUE7snXnL0/s400/DSC05368.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517163408924290946" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As one might expect of a building erected in 1905 in rural Utah, it was built by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, or the Mormons. These wild and crazy early pioneers sought a meeting and recreational hall. In </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Grand Memories</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, a history of the area published by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers, it states that Will Shafer, a carpenter, designed the building; Steve Day quarried the stone; Will Bliss hauled the stone (making four trips a day with his wagon team); and Angus Murray Stocks, a well known mason, dressed the stone. They began working sometime in the spring of 1905 and finished in May 1906.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkHPu3u4eHIC6MnD24LtUZ1uQX6sM3mCJSPF5SZ14PHoDqlOmBNVcVbFVlG6TtjhtAXVQa9lIYK47lXqqRWZmFX4aJXQnrEMk8RVo-1pEKI-JbKZRKfBLwFS-f7EKqL99P4eeUp4ujikI/s400/DSC05370.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517163411384826594" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">According to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Grand Memories</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, Day and Bliss got the rock at the “Goose Island stone quarry about a mile above the river spring.” The spring has long been known as Matrimony Spring and until 2008 emerged out of pipe a few hundred yards up Utah SR-128. (Southeastern Utah District Health Environmental Health Scientist Jim Adamson declared the spring contaminated and closed it to public access. At present, you can still access the spring, which now flows directly out of the wall. By the way, if you look carefully under the water at the spring you can see several three-toed tracks, probably dinosaur but possibly pterosaur.)</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAeZaKnVFKOkAQQC83sSMKL-wrCqhIImUKpwe868Cq9nxila-vi3YGks3KfGyfDibSFHgdsS5FNsH9g9WQZU4ch-VKMCL0cXawlgIgJfzSBKd48OTlH165TfszMblYFsMU2SAcvtx5ofQ/s400/DSC05379.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517163425981652770" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">View of Kayenta Formation at Goose Island</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">During my visit to Moab, I tried to locate any evidence of a quarry at Goose Island. The area is the first broad bench of rock up the Colorado River and dominated primarily by the Kayenta Formation, a Jurassic age fluvial sandstone. I could find no evidence of any quarry though I did find a neat piece of metal buried in the sand. I suspect that there was no formal quarry and that Day probably just blasted or broke off pieces of rock, which Stocks shaped on site at Star Hall. I also tried to locate any evidence of why Goose Island is called Goose Island and had the same lack of luck.</span></span></p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuyn6zRw4pilbPPec8iVxr3kFh2iFgVlp5kTD0xpK7jNuik_e1JIAmBUtQUQM0ZLrULYdKDJ8Ep8mkpqry8iVN_tn2PTOL1ZxwpcB35VatAs3E6vMQJBcj2q0ACD-WDn2xjGDJFMacSow/s400/DSC05377.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517163415118384354" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;line-height: normal; "><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">View from area above Goose Island (where are the geese and where is the island?)</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I was also told by a local resident that the Star Hall stone was quarried further up river at Jackass Canyon. The canyon is across the road from the Hal Canyon campground. This area seems less likely as a quarry spot because the slopes consist of rocks of the Moenkopi Formation and Chinle Formation, neither of which would make good building material. Both units are too soft. Of course, Day could have cut stone from debris blocks that had fallen from the rock units above the Chinle and Moenkopi but there is no way to verify this. Plus why would Day travel five miles further to get rocks. <o:p></o:p></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span style="font-family:Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ultimately, I have to go with the original source of Goose Island though I write this without complete confidence. The stones in Star Hall don’t really look like the Kayenta; they seem too pink but they are fresh, cleaned surfaces as opposed to the weathered rocks found in nature. Any additional insights would be appreciated. </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <!--EndFragment-->David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-52914028713216362682010-09-07T09:56:00.000-07:002010-09-07T09:56:00.087-07:00Back to the Beginning: A Reading in Moab<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Long ago when I graduated from college, I ended up in Moab, Utah. It was here that I truly fell under the spell of rocks. For the next nine years, I hiked, biked, canoed, backpacked, and explored the red rock country of southern Utah. It was a geologist's paradise with few of those pesky green things called trees getting in the way of seeing stone.</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Now, for the first time since my book </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#FF6600;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stories in Stone</span></b></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> was published I am going back to Moab. While there, I will give a</span><a href="http://www.backofbeyondbooks.com/events.cfm?mode=detail&id=1283530177847"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> reading at one of my favorite bookstores, Back of Beyond Books</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. The sister store to Arches Bookstore, Back of Beyond (or Bob, as I call it) focuses on regional books, with new, used, and antiquarian selections, including first editions of many Edward Abbey books. It will be an honor and pleasure to talk about how my time in Moab led me down the path to focus on the cultural and natural history of building stone.</span></div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhImK6506peS0e6JLK6SP64Rm5JGZ0ZSELNS1lrXIRwLX-biKmak2Nq69FbScYHrK9v4HaleeXaZRwW5bMwpmoij5OxReTddlYMMOWXQHLlIhvW0nyWBZbbsko6ATUsGRDkej_BpyBIToo/s400/23802_330479775985_290321040985_4113767_4183143_n.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5512736648433051346" /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The reading will be at 7:00 P.M. on Thursday, September 9. It should be a fun time!</span></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-13812389866727625072010-09-02T08:22:00.000-07:002010-09-02T11:50:07.490-07:00Fossils in our Nation's Capital<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">No, the title doesn't refer to the ancient beasts roaming the halls of Congress though I do wish some of them would go the way of dinosaurs. Instead, I want to highlight a web site I just learned about. It is </span><a href="http://dcfossils.org/index.php/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Fossils in the Architecture of Washington, DC: A Guide to Washington's Accidental Museum of Paleontology</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">. The site has been put together by Christopher Barr, a lawyer who has lived in DC since 1979. As the name implies, the site's</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> goal is "to describe, or at least list, all of the public fossils occurring in Washington's architectural landscape."</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9G6kvPXHyZ2oGMTXWVUjwj4CaGZqWpCmcqDVkJnXYNs01zzlX-90NYRb0Nm2dIK2YLCdEo3LMgOK2r2ozRnc_yfcsJm18_2Lv8KFNORThXjrvA_RhR4u5DNdUcGDUBqqsU7P8rnbjPkQ/s400/ReptileHouseAmmoniteNo1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5512346515890199394" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 267px; height: 400px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><a href="http://dcfossils.org/index.php/gallery8/">A Jurassic ammonite from the Reptile House at the National Zoo</a> (pinched from DC Fossils)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Barr has done a first rate job of assembling a thorough list of the fossil-rich buildings throughout the capital. For each building, he provides an introduction on what you can see, where to see it, and a history of the building. In some cases, he also speculates why a particular stone was chosen. He then provides photos (with helpful scales) of the fossils, which he describes in detail, providing geologic background. Finally, he documents who helped him and where one can obtain more background information. Nowhere else have I found such a well-put-together site about urban fossils.</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZUyet5nrInIt9SmEAlhifJjTCKm-9LoZG8YThiofx6tPYP-QGjucTdhXmeJEd2P-8FShmyWl-i27-IHYCNIlXwMUlghCo3T5h38D7S5fhrScLPlCkU5wRbJEXytHrrjWQVEdQd-uS39Y/s400/nga_coiled_shell_t.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5512346513256208274" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px; " /></span><div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:x-small;"><a href="http://dcfossils.org/index.php/gallery4/">An Ordovician nautiloid in the National Gallery of Art</a> (pinched from DC Fossils)</span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Urban fossils are amazing resources and offer an excellent way to get people interested in fossils, deep time, evolution, and geology in general. Plus, as Barr has done, these fossils are a great way to get people to think about human history. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;">He does list a many of the guides that are available but it is such a small list considering the wonderful fossils found in the urban environment. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-size:small;">I hope that Barr's site can inspire other urban paleontologists to do the same thing in their cities. </span></div></div></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-90552178888224263992010-08-25T11:10:00.000-07:002010-08-25T11:25:25.238-07:00Edward Drinker Cope: His Home Inside and Out<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">Probably every geology-oriented person knows about Edward Drinker Cope and his well-financed, nasty battle with Othniel Charles Marsh but probably fewer know about his stone-fronted house in Philadelphia. Today, I aim to try and fix this sorry dearth of knowledge by focusing on said home. Like many aspects of Cope’s life, a bit of controversy surrounds it.</span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuSo3WUitpMr3pySCBdD64sTkSZ6PBOC-9duhuzvduPCJlCFmEV17QMHR7aMLJJgkDSEnpcHT4la8x5jVTxGSdNgmXD6Q8fFRajXrhdA32cT-6AwIR54Qjc3jTrH02-NSccG_LGE-OQng/s400/cope2a.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509414093504904610" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 400px; " /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><a href="http://www.pachs.net/blogs/comments/history_of_science_in_philadelphiathe_ed_cope_residence/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">From Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science blog</span></a></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Cope owned two adjacent row houses, at 2100 and 2102 Pine Street. They are classic Second Empire with a mansard roof pierced with dormers and prominent projecting bay windows. He acquired the property in 1885 and initially lived around the corner. 2102 Pine served as his laboratory. The house sounds like a wonderful chaotic mess. His friend and biographer Henry Osborn once wrote:</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“The first floor became a storeroom for boxes and cases. At the back of the second floor was Cope’s study and the editorial room of the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">American Naturalist </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">[Cope purchased the magazine in 1877 and owned it until his death. During that time he wrote 776 articles. Ironically, Marsh’s uncle, George Peabody, had provided the money that funded the Peabody Academy of Sciences, where the magazine was initially published.]…This room always contained some of the more interesting fossils, which were brought in from the storeroom when Cope was working upon them. The front room on the second floor was entirely filled with shelves on which stood paper boxes, containing the smaller objects in Cope’s Permian and Pampean collections. On the third floor back was the preparation room, presided over by the genial Jacob Geismar…Around the floor of Cope’s study there always wandered a venerable tortoise. To the left of his study table was a vivarium, which contained a ‘Gila monster’.”</span></blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The controversy centers on exactly what type of stone clads the three-and-a-half-story row house about a mile south of the Academy of Natural Sciences. According to the nomination for the National Register of Historic Places, written in 1975, the house is faced “with a green stone peculiar to Philadelphia.” This would mean a serpentine, a stone first used in the early 1700s. Several local quarries provided the building material, which historian Berenice M. Ball wrote “suited the romantic architectural ideas of the late 1800s perfectly.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I am not sure, however, what the person who wrote the nomination was thinking. All recent photos of the building clearly show that a white stone faces the house. (The building was not refaced, as you can see that the 1975 image and modern one have the same stone.) Perhaps the author did not visit the house or was colorblind. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggmmASkruSAFC3tE2gS4f3Bk08A9lVYHsGrJJ21Bdm6LU3vb_GOsk8zBWQNAT1lBmMTaDCSZtafj9cgj59YIz3vxaS_J55llM53C0qR6kilLVaa5RM6_ZVDhpvD2nxG0GRLvQP0I5LyzQ/s400/getimage.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509414095980861522" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 331px; height: 400px; " /></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">From National Register of Historic Places Nomination</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As I started to ask around, I found that no one knew what the white stone was. One person suggested that it might be Cockeysville Marble, a stone I </span><a href="http://stories-in-stone.blogspot.com/search/label/Washington%20monument"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">previously wrote about for its use in the Washington Monument</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. An architectural historian thought that a local limestone from Montgomery County, PA, clad the structure. Both are possibilities as both were used in the area, although the Cockeysville appears to have been less popular. My trusty 1880 census of the building stone industry notes that the Montgomery limestone (actually a marble found locally within the limestone belt) was popular from the late 1700s till at least 1840 so. It was used for the U. S. Customs House and U.S. Mint, as well as for the sarcophagi of George and Martha Washington. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">If anyone knows what stone was used, please let me know.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Unfortunately, failed mining ventures in New Mexico and Colorado depleted Cope’s wealth and around 1881 he mortgaged the laboratory at 2102 Pine and in 1885 leased his Pine Street residence. He and his wife moved around the corner. Cope eventually sold much of his collection to the American Museum of Natural History but as a visit near the end of his life from the artist Charles Knight reveals, the house was still full. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">“Inside, everything was unique and completely dust covered. Never have I seen such a curious place—just like the kind Dickens would have loved. Piles of pamphlets rose from the floor to ceiling in every narrow hallway, leaving just enough room to squeeze by them and no more…Dust lay thick here as elsewhere, and the place was absolutely bare of furniture and hangings. No pictures, no curtains, nothing but petrified skeletons of extinct monsters…”</span></blockquote><p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></o:p></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Cope died at home on April 12, 1897. He was 57 years old. Jane Davidson in her revisionist biography of Cope notes that the houses are now subdivided into six to eight apartments each. A sign identifying the house and Cope stands in front of the building.</span></span><div><span style="font-family:"New York";mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 16px; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOwr_igmzZUvIz7E00oz95nPl3BOMUDwpCDGo2Nt6MLoNv526Ry9tXh6xTCG2aaxmO99MxFsKEXLlVmwx_cRo830QKpCSeKzOXA4i8eMRy-IlBH54uj_77aUqTY-5y5uZ2-dg1vzOrLRw/s400/cope1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5509414090906558450" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 400px; " /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family:"New York";mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria;mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;mso-bidi-Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language: EN-USfont-family:";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><a href="http://www.pachs.net/blogs/comments/history_of_science_in_philadelphiathe_ed_cope_residence/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">From Philadelphia Area Center for History of Science blog</span></a></span></span></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-59954520442465517952010-08-19T08:48:00.000-07:002010-08-19T09:02:51.290-07:00Mystery Solved: Bones found in Bridge<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On August 19, 1969, a short article appeared in the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">New York Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> about the solving of an 85-year-old fossil legend. The story began on October 20, 1884, when workers at a small quarry near Manchester, Connecticut, discovered fossils in several blocks of brownstone. Word of the bones soon reached legendary paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh, but before all of the fossil-rich blocks could be saved, several went into a bridge over Bigelow Brook in South Manchester. They remained there until the Connecticut highway department decided to replace the bridge, when Yale professor John Ostrom acquired the blocks and found the long lost fossils.</span></div><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdtxKoVFrYIP7VeEUyzNA8udUyN1ipOd9H7Mt9PURERqLMe8jxu3yHQ_V4tLvf2A8GjFw1FRwQlyJahGkAtQS-MhbfMqdLB7Kahqunfz4K98RwTAVAqvyLErMqkhMYJjtro2ycsAaA2yc/s400/Bridge+at+Hop+Brook.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5507149925125879058" /> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">The bridge over Hop Creek at Bridge Street, now demolished. While stone for this bridge was being quarried at Buckland, dinosaurs were found." Photo by Sylvian Ofiara in The Manchester Evening Herald. Published in A New England Pattern by William E. Buckley, 1973. Used courtesy of Manchester Historical Society</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The quarry, owned by Charles O. Wolcott, pulled stone out of the Portland Formation, a 200-million-old sandstone deposited into a rift valley on the eastern margin of North America. Out of quarries of this stone in other parts of the Connecticut River Valley came most of the brownstone used in New York City and Boston. The major quarry was in Portland, Connecticut, about 15 miles southwest of Manchester. A shopping mall now covers the Wolcott quarry.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">According to Marsh’s notes, the block was “half as large as an ordinary dining table.” It supposedly contained the front end of a dinosaur that Marsh initially named </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anchisaurus major</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, which he changed to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ammosaurus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in 1891. He was able to name the dinosaur from the remains of the hind end that had been found in a block saved for him. Over the next few years two other dinosaur specimens came out of the same quarry. Marsh named them </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anchisaurus colorus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A. solus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, in 1891 and 1892, respectively. Both also were renamed later. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A colorus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> became </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Yaleosaurus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> and </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A. solus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> became </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ammosaurus solus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Times</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> article reported that Ostrom spent two years surveying more than 60 bridges in the region and finally concluded with 95% certainty that the notorious block had gone into a bridge over Hop Brook. (A study by Peter Galton in 1976 noted that there had been some confusion in the records, which lead to the search.) When news reached Ostrom about the bridge’s soon-to-happen destruction, he contacted the highway crew, which readily agreed to allow Ostrom and a crew to examine some 400 sandstone blocks over a two-day-period. Local elementary school teacher Richard Sanders found the first bone, a rib. Shortly thereafter, laboratory technician Rebekah Smith noticed a larger bone, a femur. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Over the next few years Peter Galton conducted a detailed study (</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Postilla</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> 169, 1976) of all of the prosauropods (now called basal sauropodomorphs) from North America, including the new bones found in the bridge blocks. He again revised the names of the dinosaurs collected from the Wolcott quarry. Now, just two species remained, what Galton called “the slender-footed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Anchisaurus polyzelus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">” and the “broad footed </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ammosaurus major</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">.” The rib came from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Ammosaurus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> but the femur could not be clearly identified. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "><img src="webkit-fake-url://AFA8EECA-738C-4E36-8B6C-6CB1EE1532EA/image.tiff" /></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Skelton of<i> Ammosaurus major</i> from Galton's 1976 study. Based on bones from Wolcott's quarry</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "></span>Galton's study, however, did not end the confusion over the fossils from Wolcott's quarry. In the subsequent years, various paleontologists have debated which species the bones came from. Were there two species as Galton initially concluded, or one (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><i>A. major</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">) as Paul Sereno (Special Papers in Palaeontology 77, 261-289) concluded in 2007 or one (</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><i>A. polyzelu</i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; ">s) as Adam Yates (Palaeontology 53:4, 739-752) concluded in 2010? Clearly the legendary bones still contain a bit of mystery.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'New York';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-4087679092796096342010-08-18T14:44:00.000-07:002010-08-18T14:46:56.009-07:00Family Hour in Seattle: Squirrels and Crows<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Warning. This post has nothing to do with geology.</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It has been a busy hour for families in my neighborhood. For the past ten minutes or so, I have been watching a strange little manifestation of urban flight as a family moved up the block in what appears to be a case of escaping a bad situation. I first noticed the migration when I saw a gray squirrel trotting along the telephone wires across from our house. From my desk, I could see that the squirrel carried something large in its mouth, but I wasn’t quick enough to get out my binoculars before it disappeared into a dense spruce.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">Twenty seconds later, I saw the squirrel again, headed in the opposite direction across the wire. This time it climbed up a pine, about thirty feet south of the spruce. I had noticed squirrels going into this tree over the past few weeks and figured it harbored a nest. In a half a minute, the squirrel descended and leapt onto the wire. This time I had the binoculars out and could see that she was carrying a baby squirrel, one small arm extended out over mom’s head. Again, she climbed the spruce and vanished in the foliage.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">She proceeded to carry over two more youngsters. Each time she seemed to be in a hurry, moving quickly over the wire and only pausing periodically. When she stopped (I know she was a she because I could see nipples), she looked like she was catching her breath. Now she is gone, apparently having moved all of her kids.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">What prompted her move? A mammalogist I know speculated that some body or some thing had disturbed her nest. Curiously, we also have a nest of Cooper’s Hawks on our block. They live in a huge Douglas fir down the block. I have also been watching and hearing them. The youngsters, like so many, are easy to tell because they have a whiny sort of call, which I find appealing. The hawks have definitely been causing havoc amongst the other, wilder residents.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">Last week, I watched one of the beautiful long-tailed birds sitting high in a Doug fir in our yard eating a smaller bird. I couldn’t see who had become breakfast, but as the hawk bent over and grabbed at the meal in its talons little feathers would flutter down.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">A second possibility for the move suggested themselves five minutes or so after the squirrel’s exodus. Two crows landed on the wire above the squirrel’s travel route. They stood a few inches apart before one of them shimmied over and began to use its beak to pick at the neck and head of its neighbor. The one being pecked had that head down look I have when I am getting my neck scratched. AAAH, that feels good.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; ">Crows are known predators and scavengers of other birds and squirrels. In fact, they often get blamed for much urban wildlife depredation, mostly because they operate during the day and get seen with their meals, whereas other carnivores, such as raccoons, generally do their work at night. I know there are raccoons in the area as I saw a large one across the street during the day a few weeks back.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia; font-size: small; line-height: 24px; ">I won’t speculate as to who caused the move. It was fun to watch. And in just a few more weeks, those young squirrels will be on their own, without mom’s protection. Such is the life for all of us.</span></p>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-16490392132999208932010-08-05T08:09:00.000-07:002010-08-05T09:18:41.713-07:00Arizona Red: Red Rock and Brownstone<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Lee Allison at </span><a href="http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Arizona Geology</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> recently sent me a link to a nifty article about a </span><a href="http://www.azdailysun.com/news/local/article_07c42320-0f91-5968-8b79-be2b2c4533f1.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">sandstone quarry</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in Flagstaff. The article details the history of the use of the Moenkopi Formation sandstone, which sold under the name Arizona Red. Construction of a new fire station prompted the story as it will be built on the site of the old quarry.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The quarry opened in 1888 providing massive blocks of stone for the growing town and quickly attracted the attention of builders around the west. Many buildings with Arizona Red still stand in Flagstaff, including the Coconino County Courthouse, the Babbitt Brothers building (which also contains brick made from Moenkopi derived soils), and a host of structures on the Northern Arizona University campus. By 1910, however, Arizona Red was no longer popular. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Residents of Flagstaff were not the first to use the Moenkopi for building. Beautiful structures with it can be found just north of Flagstaff in Wupatki National Monument. The Sinagua people first started to build here around 675 CE. They moved out of the area just prior to the 1064 eruption of nearby Sunset Crater.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As </span><a href="http://www.cal.nau.edu/history/faculty/jackson.asp"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Marie Jackson</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> noted in her wonderful book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stone Landmarks: Flagstaff's Geology and Historic Building Stones</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, more than 500 boxcars of Arizona Red were sent to Los Angeles for its county courthouse in 1889. Unfortunately, damage from a 1933 earthquake led to demolition in 1936. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxEaAG6DQMNMhrI9qT39EtYqxLC8jitdGrIEs14C-EpLZCXiL2TKmQRYmJoA75vxJJ7yNLJcZuCkr0_uWArnyT4ubR31fldXRE726EeCqWABnkdUFQoazCcJ5T7D1ggxjXJPWJOB-MD9Q/s400/County_Court_House.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501956650628424770" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 287px; " /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">LA County Courthouse From Books about California web site</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQYEaAAPJHczIDvWsMN_iM7yB7PQwEq7hHNag-EJZIAfNpeKdlxzvVwYuyb4EmAUwrJSQcJJMmncpEfjmQxTjzQTtQpbHouAo46KqnLOvhedgwhKuYZdCzxAY1kFd4wWDcFOqTOYba-Uc/s400/losangeles.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501956643308189490" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 311px; " /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">LA County Courthouse From www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/trial/historic/losangeles.htm</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Another well-known California edifice made of Arizona Red is the </span><a href="http://www.noehill.com/sf/landmarks/sf075.asp"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Whittier Mansion</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in San Francisco. Built between 1894 and 1896, the mansion has had a colorful history of ownership, including shipping and mercantile magnate William Franklin Whittier; the German Reich, for use as a consulate; the United States Government, which seized the building during World War II; and the California Historical Society. It is now a private residence, curiously painted an odd tan/yellow. Perhaps that is why either the ghosts of Whittier or his son have been reported to haunt the house. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivzEZfd5Xj9frj_I_k3mVvQcbTGlutksZp85m5npVjtof6GXy23Cwz3sGPrxRSew6DkJps76fJEjO3nNMypUrlsnmUW3J4IpNRmdh03TjSZ4rZCygrAhw3YJYRNzs9TiCwl7tKMf8YcLc/s400/whittier_mansion_exterior_habs_thumb.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501956638167611570" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 340px; height: 334px; " /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Whittier Mansion 1919 from www.noehill.com</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5IcWr-bwF5rhzJyScINW4btnszsJuSFNIQtkgZSnASNcnARxy89J5h1E5eH6p8rvBriSEK6pMNXq5dQpUVT0hwWfmF2JER_BNkQACq9yIihlfbm6iYAru4mOlBb-NQKwh4WYTJ3-amxQ/s400/whittier_mansion_east_view_thumg.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5501956635580707410" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 340px; height: 400px; " /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">Whittier Mansion modern From www.noehill.com</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Jackson describes the stone as "rather soft...in which the sand grains are not especially well cemented." This weakness contributed to the stone's downfall in areas wetter than Flagstaff. In particular, she noted that Arizona Red did poorly on the Whittier. That weakness, however, also made it easy for masons to carve elaborate detailing, which can still be seen in buildings in more arid regions. </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Moenkopi Formation extends across the Colorado Plateau and formed between 242 and 237 million years ago. Deposition occurred on a wide coastal plain in a semi-arid environment. Around Flagstaff the sands came from the overflow of streams onto the sand and mudflats. In other areas, the mudflats preserve excellent trace fossils, such as raindrops and reptile tracks. Fine layers of Moenkopi make up the base of many slopes in the canyonlands region of southern Utah.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">One final note that ties back to my title for this posting. When I first moved to Boston in 1996 away from Moab, Utah, I sorely missed the red rock canyons of the desert, but as I noted in my book </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Stories in Stone</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, I happened upon the brownstone base of Harvard Hall on Harvard's campus. After doing my part as an agent of erosion, I made the simple observation that brownstone and red rock are basically the same thing--a sandstone colored by iron. It was a wonderful day for me as I realized that I could make a deeper connection to geology through building stone. </span></div>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-14952896592152155472010-05-18T07:56:00.001-07:002010-05-18T08:07:57.099-07:00The Toads of Mount St. Helens<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Today being the 30</span></span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">th</span></span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens, I wanted to describe a visit I made to the mountain several years ago. I was out in the field with Charlie Crisafulli, a researcher for the U.S. Forest Service. We were heading to small lake about eight miles north of the crater when Charlie told me “Be careful where you step as we approach the lake.”</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">At first I didn’t understand why he warned me; the terrain was level and we were walking on a four foot wide path. As we got closer, though, the ground began to move. Dark, half-inch-long toadlets hopped everywhere.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Scores crossed the path. More moved along the sides and others disappeared into the dense green understory. At the lake, we found thousands in pulsating piles collected along the water’s edge.</span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOHzLtOEQENzbOfQ4Hboh7TLSKfSIcvKY_oeh-cPBNjxAVFEVPa4v7Q83KXjrU0eHEtwoN_4pd-nHsGm-sKspwBk86eHfSz14xtm4CSsPeUejuMPofvXavLCWPjITlj390zlaC2ENWoo/s1600/IMG_0015.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOHzLtOEQENzbOfQ4Hboh7TLSKfSIcvKY_oeh-cPBNjxAVFEVPa4v7Q83KXjrU0eHEtwoN_4pd-nHsGm-sKspwBk86eHfSz14xtm4CSsPeUejuMPofvXavLCWPjITlj390zlaC2ENWoo/s400/IMG_0015.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472624345914356386" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">When I looked closely, I saw that many of the little hoppers had yet to loose their tails. Charlie, who had been studying the mountain since the eruption, explained to me that they were recently metamorphosed boreal toads and that they soon would head up into the hillsides that surround the lake and continue one of the most amazing stories at the volcano.</span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfiKy0FyueyTOqi35dmyqraIXZWsLJiJqxJjT0c4u__4FpRcQylw3yIJyfQ3h_Gcd8SBMcuwA36zHzZ_1PT_R8KC1qklv2Inytdq8StSXNOcVbqk_vxSsI8k3LTPJzfz2RzI597etI2iI/s1600/IMG_0016.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfiKy0FyueyTOqi35dmyqraIXZWsLJiJqxJjT0c4u__4FpRcQylw3yIJyfQ3h_Gcd8SBMcuwA36zHzZ_1PT_R8KC1qklv2Inytdq8StSXNOcVbqk_vxSsI8k3LTPJzfz2RzI597etI2iI/s400/IMG_0016.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472624353302747250" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">During Charlie’s first ten years on the mountain, he had noticed large numbers of boreal toads. This surprised him because the toads, warty, four to five-inch long, brownish green hoppers, had been on the decline throughout the west.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">(They are listed as “endangered” in Colorado and New Mexico and designated as a protected non-game species in Wyoming.) Trying to determine why the toads thrived at the volcano, he surveyed every lake in the national monument in the early 1990s and found that four lakes had far and away the areas of highest toad density.</span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0s-Mwk4uB47hqf7Su92Pc9mBCLUC39W1Smi8NjhZgXcNh2JYtK7qmHoj_wboj73YUKD71MLVZsCso5eiBSeKuT0zUt4P3BnNsWx3dnVmvoIRfQPExxjbSbZweC2Lb6pJjn-G_PrWHFc/s1600/IMG_0019.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhS0s-Mwk4uB47hqf7Su92Pc9mBCLUC39W1Smi8NjhZgXcNh2JYtK7qmHoj_wboj73YUKD71MLVZsCso5eiBSeKuT0zUt4P3BnNsWx3dnVmvoIRfQPExxjbSbZweC2Lb6pJjn-G_PrWHFc/s400/IMG_0019.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472624356462870114" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In an ongoing study of the one lake where we had tiptoed through the toads, Charlie discovered why so many toads now lived at the volcano. Each June, he and his crew hike out to the partially frozen lake, where hundreds of toads and a handful of northwest salamanders hop and crawl across the snow. The researchers then wade into the water, push aside rafts of ice, and wait. Males arrive first. After the females arrive, pairs mate quietly (the male lacks the typical toad mating call), and produce teeming masses of eggs, up to 12,000 per female.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Eggs hatch 7 to 10 days later. The toads we saw had recently crawled out of the water and were preparing to disperse into the mountains surrounding the lake.</span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR8cDhU8fVxl2IpkBV8ZsjXxmakRUuYHJAnyAn7UfEL7em_0H-UrA1Ig2vcWNOFjM159Kb1zJqAyROk_IulyQC6t5KezYSikbmW6kGGCRMNU8mLyK76lLpZ9a0pmnfIeSfMaOXVx5Rne4/s1600/IMG_0020.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR8cDhU8fVxl2IpkBV8ZsjXxmakRUuYHJAnyAn7UfEL7em_0H-UrA1Ig2vcWNOFjM159Kb1zJqAyROk_IulyQC6t5KezYSikbmW6kGGCRMNU8mLyK76lLpZ9a0pmnfIeSfMaOXVx5Rne4/s400/IMG_0020.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472624364491458946" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“We think that this is what happened in 1980. During the eruption, the frogs were hibernating underground and emerged a month or so later and continued their normal life cycle,” said Charlie. In the long term, the toads benefited because the eruption blasted down all of the trees around the lake, making the water warmer thus increasing food resources during the summer and allowing tadpoles to mature more quickly. The blast also removed most of the toads’ predators, so more toadlets and adults survived. </span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thirty years later, the toads are still thriving at Mount St. Helens. In doing so, they have contributed to a <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, serif; ">new understanding of ecological recovery. In landscapes where geologic and ecologic change is the rule and not the exception, disturbance plays an important role in the life of the ecosystem. Fires, volcanic eruptions, and floods regularly reshape broad swaths of the American West. Sometimes, entire ecosystems are devastated. But every time a cataclysm happens, the plants and animals recover.</span></span></p> <span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It’s a lesson, perhaps, in patience: What we see today as a natural disaster may not be a disaster at all, just a natural clock resetting, a cycle starting over again. Lessons come in all shapes, sometimes even little green ones.</span></span></span><!--EndFragment-->David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-53085727516072019692010-05-14T07:11:00.000-07:002010-05-14T07:22:26.668-07:00Giro d'Italia and Carrara<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In honor of the Giro d'Italia ending in Carrara today, here's a take on the town. I first saw Carrara and its quarries from a car window, while I was driving north out of Pisa.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">My wife, a couple friends, and I had stopped in Pisa to look at the Leaning Tower but left after about 45 minutes.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It’s not made of Carrara marble and the commercialization was offputting.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I didn’t need to buy boxers with Leaning Tower located in a prominent place.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We were about 25 miles or so from the green foothills of the Apuan Alps.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Broken clouds created a pattern of shade and light punctuated by several bright white splotches.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Earlier I had read guidebooks that explained that “No, that isn’t snow, it’s marble,” so I knew I was seeing the Carrara marble. I was quite giddy at seeing it, but as we drove closer to town my excitement began to fizzle.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Where were the charming old buildings?</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Quarries had been worked in these mountains more or less continuously for the past five centuries and I expected quaint structures made of the local stone.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Instead, the road felt like many other industrial/shopping mall districts I had driven by, with warehouses, car dealers, and restaurants creating a monotonous blur of banal buildings.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I enjoyed seeing all of the stone mills, each with stacks of marble blocks, pallets of sliced stone slabs, and massive cranes for ferrying the stone, but they looked like any stone mill I had seen in my previous travels.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Finally, as we drove closer to the mountains the wide, industrial street gave way to a confusing maze of narrow, often one-way, poorly marked roads.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">After circling around, getting lost, backtracking, and hoping we knew where we were, we crammed our little rental car into a spot along a lane about twice as wide as our car.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">A typical Carrarese building, a four story, plain stucco-covered structure, stood about two feet from my front door.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">On the other side of the road, and twenty feet below us in a concrete-sided trench, ran the </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Torrente Carrione</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">, Carrara’s couple-inch-deep trickle of a stream.</span></span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTkNsE88aXIC-RhvDAWX4wvltqIVl6Q0gOfWXpwqVUumaZY-DBIh05ppW05LYe66CFOeHjKivwTTVqwuCR-Qryi4DmGQPRDaBF3R348ADmo5g2hpZk77mQh9lkDluCswGhMu_W-axvqQ/s1600/DSC01549.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjTkNsE88aXIC-RhvDAWX4wvltqIVl6Q0gOfWXpwqVUumaZY-DBIh05ppW05LYe66CFOeHjKivwTTVqwuCR-Qryi4DmGQPRDaBF3R348ADmo5g2hpZk77mQh9lkDluCswGhMu_W-axvqQ/s400/DSC01549.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471129016266624626" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Abandoning the car, the four of us wandered toward where we thought our bed and breakfast might be.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The streets closed tighter, eventually getting too narrow for cars.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Above us rose canyon-creating buildings, many with windows festooned with drying laundry and hanging planters.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Not every building was made from marble, but I had no doubt we had entered a hub of the marble universe.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Not that the locals respected their great stone; graffiti covered many marble walls and several marble statues.</span></span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMxApdkPnwoW0KBLY_iWdkhWRwQ0EwDJA5szmdkQgirDkDf7R0Sq4dF7qNLBnEW47d9hMtoKxfrfyBU7zMw8_1HWJqTqt_HUumwpXyg5yudZQKyuc9zVOA7hYs7wN8tJyolV39VVp9Yc/s1600/DSC01604.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiMxApdkPnwoW0KBLY_iWdkhWRwQ0EwDJA5szmdkQgirDkDf7R0Sq4dF7qNLBnEW47d9hMtoKxfrfyBU7zMw8_1HWJqTqt_HUumwpXyg5yudZQKyuc9zVOA7hYs7wN8tJyolV39VVp9Yc/s400/DSC01604.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471129039759986050" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The next morning, I met with Dr. Paolo Conti, a geologist at the Center for Geotechnology at the University of Siena.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Paolo had graciously offered to take me up into the mountains to learn more about the quarries and the geology.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Getting in his car we drove three miles or so into the Apuans.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We parked in a lot next to the Ponti di Vara, a handsome, five-arched, brick-and-marble bridge.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Originally, a route for the railroad that crisscrossed the quarries, the Ponti di Vara is barely wide enough for the hundreds of trucks that zip across it each day.</span></span></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCY1v9WwXCzylQ6bhkJvWvHFK4Z9sbqr6QzYlksXe6-BaHxjO69uMUxbnLobnr1UZfAfIdx-sCHXtfw2o84aKPuelqtEuwlLPtxg4gXT6MXHkIo34Tq3_fEdZ65HLkdAKsf3xadAp8xKU/s1600/DSC01555.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCY1v9WwXCzylQ6bhkJvWvHFK4Z9sbqr6QzYlksXe6-BaHxjO69uMUxbnLobnr1UZfAfIdx-sCHXtfw2o84aKPuelqtEuwlLPtxg4gXT6MXHkIo34Tq3_fEdZ65HLkdAKsf3xadAp8xKU/s400/DSC01555.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471129024265123138" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">From where we stood, we could look directly up toward the quarries of marble. They glowed a blinding white in the sunlight and had crept half way up Mount Maggiore, which rose 3,000 feet above us.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Across the road, yellow signs pointed to several quarries, including the legendary Fantiscritti, quarried since Roman times.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Another sign read “Visita la cava in galleria piu’ bella del mondo.” </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Visit the most beautiful underground quarry in the world.</span></span></i></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtbf4uLCkMzIGs9lAca-6x5EICO7vg89ViuUrfzffBsOQ27qjIujrDZU6JpiO2dsPhEW3R58t4_wp5Rc3o5kTPW8GmnOppqga-g0GWQjxQZ0TuiSpgRrvJ2ILJBm-z5NyJBIlP6yRuh5w/s1600/DSC01561.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtbf4uLCkMzIGs9lAca-6x5EICO7vg89ViuUrfzffBsOQ27qjIujrDZU6JpiO2dsPhEW3R58t4_wp5Rc3o5kTPW8GmnOppqga-g0GWQjxQZ0TuiSpgRrvJ2ILJBm-z5NyJBIlP6yRuh5w/s400/DSC01561.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471129029527948674" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Pulling out several, very cool and colorful geology maps, Paolo showed us that we were at the base of the Miseglia valley, one of three quarry valleys around Carrara.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">To the north lay Torano and to the south Colonnata.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Each cut back into the Apuans for several miles and each had quarries first operated in Roman times.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">No one knows how many quarries have pierced these mountains but I have read an estimate as high as 650.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">One of Paolo’s geologic map from 2000 listed 187 quarries.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Since I wanted to see more of the quarries, Paolo suggested we head up above the next valley north, Torano.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">After driving for ten minutes or so, Paolo swerved the car across the road on a hairpin turn, and pulled off on a very soft shoulder.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">His driving seemed like a typical geologist’s, veering abruptly to see rocks, combined with an Italian’s sanguinity at cutting across a blind turn.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“I often bring students here,” said Paolo, perhaps explaining his driving calm.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“It’s one of the better spots to see the thick beds of limestone (the 200-million-year old source material for the marble).”</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We got out, I looked both ways, and crossed the road.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Oaks and beeches, some of which had begun to change color, grew out of the gray, massive rock.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I had encountered limestone like this before in many places.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I called it </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">tearpants</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> limestone, in reference to its sharp, resistant edges.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“We haven’t found many fossils in this rock but this is one place we have,” said Paolo.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I looked but found nothing other than a few snails crawling across the broken edges of lackluster limestone.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Up and up we drove as the road climbed and wound steadily through the foothills.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We passed through zones of pines, under a canopy of rust colored beeches, before stopping near a small lodge, where we hoped to find lunch.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Since it was closed we walked across the road and hiked up a trail to the Refugio Carrara, one of the elaborate huts that one can stay at throughout the Italian Alps.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">We did find lunch there and I got to accomplish one of my goals for the trip. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Over the past few years, a cured pig fat called </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Lardo di Colonnata</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> has achieved a certain status among epicures, but for Carrara’s cavatori lardo has been a staple of their diet for centuries, a cheap, abundant food that tasted cool and refreshing on a hot day.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I knew I couldn’t quarry stone, but at least I could eat like a quarryman.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The Carrarese make lardo in their dank basements by curing raw pig fat in a tub of marble.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Additional flavor comes from a combination of rock salt, pepper, garlic, and rosemary.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Like the cavatori, I ate my thin slice of lardo with onion and tomato on bread.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">It had a creamy, translucent texture and melted deliciously in my mouth.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I followed it with a shot of espresso.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Geologizing doesn’t get any better than this.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Energized by pig fat and caffeine, we headed back out to find rocks.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Paolo whisked us down the road to a spectacular viewpoint into the Torano Basin, where I could finally get a sense of the scale of quarrying.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">In the center of the valley, fifteen hundred feet lower and a three quarters of mile away, a ledgy quarry, known as Polvaccio, stairstepped up the valley face.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Polvaccio has been worked since Roman times and was where Michelangelo quarried his </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Pietá</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> block.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Getting out my binoculars, I counted 18 ledges of marble, each of which Paolo explained was between 15 and 30 feet thick.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></o:p></span></p> <span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyyptmdKVj81iJFAqIBryYnvnbctUaZgNnjm76LGyAICfENX2Ie0s4ylvu-HqbGYDIbrpk_0rJ9fTW5cka6rCooRYupV7uKHHOgCVET3GPiBMJIXzPx2VVjD4DGgp_5vdb48MMvF8_Q5A/s1600/DSC01578.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyyptmdKVj81iJFAqIBryYnvnbctUaZgNnjm76LGyAICfENX2Ie0s4ylvu-HqbGYDIbrpk_0rJ9fTW5cka6rCooRYupV7uKHHOgCVET3GPiBMJIXzPx2VVjD4DGgp_5vdb48MMvF8_Q5A/s400/DSC01578.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5471129945740795954" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px; " /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Nearly every inch of the valley walls around Polvaccio had been ravaged by quarries.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">Road after road zigzagged up the nearly vertical faces, faces covered white in marble by years of quarry debris.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The bends on the quarry roads are so sharp that trucks cannot turn and instead back down every other switchback.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">More roads climbed the valley wall below me, as well as the smaller valleys south and east of Polvaccio.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">At the high points of the southern and eastern valley ridgelines, quarries had lopped off the summits, creating openings shaped like gun sights.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">“I remember when there was a mountain there,” said Paolo.</span></span><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">The view was one of the most spectacular and disturbing I have ever seen.</span></span></span><!--EndFragment-->David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3969755186620450545.post-1123903058212947412010-05-04T09:28:00.000-07:002010-05-04T09:47:43.329-07:00Greystones: Chicago's Answer to Brownstones<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Many people, including me, have written extensively about the classic brownstones of New York and Boston. Recently, I learned about a similar building style popular only in Chicago. Architects and historians call the buildings greystones. The term refers to structures built primarily between 1890 and 1915 and most often in the Chicago neighborhood of North Lawndale. A </span></span><a href="http://www.uic.edu/aa/cdc/files/GreystoneInitiative.htm"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">survey published</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> in December 2005 for the Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative estimated 1,714 greystone buildings in North Lawndale.</span></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">North Lawndale has an incredibly rich social history. By 1930, only Warsaw and New York had more Jewish residents. Forty nine synagogues dotted the neighborhood. By 1960, however, African-Americans made up 91 percent of the population. As Charles Leeks of</span></span><a href="http://www.nhschicago.org/content/greystone_page.php?cat_id=10&content_id=96"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> wrote in </span></span><a href="http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite/metadata.epl?mode=synopsis&bookkey=5757671"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Chicago Greystone in Historic North Lawndale</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “If Lawndale’s Greystones could talk, they would tell us” of Golda Meir, Dinah Washington, Benny Goodman, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Clarence Darrow making a vibrant, dynamic neighborhood. </span></span></span></span></o:p></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaB1giWIvGUOWLhrCQHcuJRfRSwm5JHiIcF844ZtxRp_9EshD3C0K_z5K3V6kKZhLLooaYJm3owJXBAS1FAM-BJxX0gb2kAzC7f52ihlwwyGcPxl-VOc9uUI3KgXs7If1TPcfltose7Zg/s1600/greystone01.jpg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaB1giWIvGUOWLhrCQHcuJRfRSwm5JHiIcF844ZtxRp_9EshD3C0K_z5K3V6kKZhLLooaYJm3owJXBAS1FAM-BJxX0gb2kAzC7f52ihlwwyGcPxl-VOc9uUI3KgXs7If1TPcfltose7Zg/s400/greystone01.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467455267454143602" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 174px; height: 400px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">From: www.nhschicago.org/content/greystone.php</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Like the brownstones of the east coast, Chicago’s greystones were two- or three-story, commonly 2 or 3 flats (though there could be up to 6), flat roofed, brick buildings with a façade of more fancy stone. There also were greystone mansions and one-story greystone “shoeboxes,” but not so many as to define a unified style. More then 93 percent have fewer than five residential units. Working class people of modest means, with some more affluent middle class folks, were the primary buyers and tenants. Some streets are entirely greystones flats, whereas others may contain just one or two greystones.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">On the eastern seaboard, the stone embellishment was the 200-million-year old Portland Formation. Chicago builders, in contrast, took advantage of their proximity to the great limestone quarry region of Indiana and enhanced their brick with the 330-million-year old Salem Limestone. I won’t write more about these stones because I have covered them thoroughly in previous blog posts.</span></span></o:p></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The survey found two stages of style. Initially between 1890 and 1905, primarily Romanesque buildings with rusticated limestone dominated. They featured arches and robust cornices. Next came a Neo-Classical look incorporating smooth limestone blocks, bay and Palladian windows, and columns. Throughout the era, many builders also built purely brick buildings in the same styles. Curiously the color of the brick changed from red to tawny.</span></span></o:p></p> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6qzsrjYHs5BpuyzfhTalPIDMmem9F-oPCpnxHfyO1go3pu1JBw40eQuICQ3hDvSfIFLK1XW6VD29kcjsBz0meLLP8JJmOTutdyo-oP9QFngS8Tt0ZlG1EofehcqrVHoUeqlsFUuOsmnw/s1600/Gallery_2.jpg"><br /><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6qzsrjYHs5BpuyzfhTalPIDMmem9F-oPCpnxHfyO1go3pu1JBw40eQuICQ3hDvSfIFLK1XW6VD29kcjsBz0meLLP8JJmOTutdyo-oP9QFngS8Tt0ZlG1EofehcqrVHoUeqlsFUuOsmnw/s400/Gallery_2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467455261398056050" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px; " /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">From: www.greystonepreservationllc.com</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 24px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: georgia, serif; font-size: small; ">Beginning in 2006, a consortium of groups banded together to form the <a href="http://www.architectmagazine.com/community-projects/qa-charles-leeks.aspx">Historic Chicago Greystone Initiative</a> to preserve these wonderful buildings. Composed of community residents, non-profits, business, academic, and government partners, the Initiative promotes renovation and protection, through technical and financial assistance. They are doing vital and critical work. I wish them continued success.</span></span></span></p>David B. Williamshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02029815547817167829noreply@blogger.com2