Poetry in Stone - Robinson Jeffers

Granite so infused the life of Robinson Jeffers that it helped transform him from a imitative, mediocre poet to one of the great American poets of the 20^th century. His transformation occurred during the time he built his house, built on a barren knoll that jutted out into the Pacific Ocean in Carmel, California. Jeffers built what he and his wife called Tor House and the accompanying Hawk Tower between 1919 and 1925.

“My fingers had the art to make stone love stone,” wrote Jeffers in a poetic tribute to Tor House. His intimate knowledge of rocks came from the years he spent finding, carrying, and placing boulders for his exquisite little home. During the 44 years he lived at Tor House, Jeffers developed what Loren Eisely called “one of the most uncanny and complete relationships between a man and his natural background, that I know in literature."

Looking toward the ocean from the garden at Tor House

I first saw Tor House and Hawk Tower in 2002 from the road that runs along the water below them. Light green grasses, gray-green shrubs and a few light gray boulders covered the slope leading up to the stone buildings. The house is squat with a narrow row of windows just below a small triangle of brown roof. The tower is square, about half the width of the house, and topped by a square turret with two eye-like windows opening out to the ocean behind me. The structures didn’t appear to be built so much as they appeared to emerge geologically from the hillside, as if Jeffers had used the nearby cliffs, seastacks, and outcroppings for blueprints.

Tor House and Hawk Tower

Up close, the buildings sustained my first impressions of geology manifest as home. No two stones were alike and rarely did stones of the same size rest next to each other. Edges were not perfectly straight but looked weathered and eroded. Barnacles still covered some of the stones Jeffers liberated from the sea. Finger trails ran through the mortar, trace fossils of a man and his passion.

Hawk Tower

His passion and intimacy with rock reveals itself in his poetry. I love his imagery of rocks as the “bones of the old mother” or the “world’s cradle.” Waves are “drunken quarrymen/Climbing the cliff, hewing out more stone for me.” The surf “cheerfully pounds the worn granite drum.” During erosion the “hills dissolve and are liquidated.”

And it is clear Jeffers felt the tremor of at least one earthquake. He wrote:

…the teeth of the fracture

Gnashed together, snapping on each other; the powers

of the earth drank

Their pang of unendurable release and the old resistances

Locked. The long coast was shaken like a leaf.

In a second, haunting description:

The heads of the high redwoods down the deep canyon

Rippled, instantly earthquake shook the granite-boned

ridge like a rat

In a dog’s teeth; the house danced and bobbled,

lightning flashed from the ground, the deep earth roared

yellow dust

Was seen rising in divers places and rock-slides

Roared in the gorges; then all things stilled and the

earth stood quiet.

Jeffers clearly paid attention to the natural world around him. Ever since his childhood he had had a connection to nature but not until he settled in Carmel and worked on the land did he develop the knowledge that gave him a voice to describe place. And this relationship centered on the house and tower he built from granite boulders on a low, barren knoll overlooking the sea.

“The place was maiden, no previous/Building, no neighbors, nothing but the elements, Rock, wind and sea,” wrote Jeffers in a poem titled The Last Conservative. How could he build any other type of structure? How could I not love that building? In his ode to Tor House, Jeffers concludes “My ghost you needn’t look for; it is probably here, but a dark one, deep in granite.”

America's First Commercial Railroad - Quincy Granite

Architect/engineer named Solomon Willard arrived in Quincy, Massachusetts, in 1825. Legend holds that he had walked 300 miles across New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts in search of the perfect granite for what would become his most famous building, the Bunker Hill Monument. Willard found that granite at a ledge in a wooded area.

It was a dark gray granite, which formed around 450 million years. Now known as the Quincy (pronounced Quin-ZEE) Granite, it is an unusual granite. Most granites contain two types of the mineral feldspar, broadly called plagioclase feldspar and alkali feldspar. In contrast, Quincy contains only alkali feldspar, a result of solidifying at a high temperature. Alkali feldspar gives the rock its characteristic green-tinted, dusky gray color. (One Quincy quarry owner called himself the “Extra Dark Man” because of the particularly dark stone excavated from his property.) Further darkening results from the Quincy’s nearly black quartz, as opposed to the more common clear or white varieties.

But back to Willard. The location of the granite presented a challenge. How would he move blocks that weighed up to 6 tons across the 12 miles of swamp, forest, and farms that separated Quincy from Charlestown, where the monument would be erected? Willard favored either a completely overland route or moving the stone in winter, when sledges could carry the blocks to the Neponset River, four miles north. A barge would transport the stone through Boston Harbor to Charlestown, which formed a peninsula on the north side of the Charles River, due north of downtown Boston.

Another engineer and associate of Willard’s, Gridley Bryant, however, suggested that a railroad would be more efficient. With the support of Boston merchant and philanthropist, Thomas Perkins, Bryant ended up designing what would become the first, commercial railroad in the United states. Pulled by horses, the railcar ran through a swamp and gently downhill to the river, where it ended at a 1,200-foot-long wharf, which took six months to build and cost two-thirds of the total $50,000 price of the railroad.

Bryant’s most innovative design was his rail car, fourteen feet long, eleven feet tall, and supported by six-and-one-half-foot high wheels. The empty car would back up to where the cut blocks were. Workers would turn gears on the car, which would lower a pallet supported by six chains. They would unhook the pallet, move the car forward, load a block or blocks, and back the car up again. One man could raise a six-ton block, which could be up to three feet wide and 32 inches high.

Scanned from the Quincy Historical Society newsletter, No. 26, Fall 1991

Bryant made the first test run of the railroad on October 7, 1826, on what became known as the Granite Railway. Workers loaded three cars with 16 tons of rock and a single horse pulled the entire load. Despite the railway's success, work didn't began on the monument till April 1827. It was finished in 1842. A formal dedication took place the following year, with 110 Revolutionary War veterans present, including 97-year-old Phineas Johnson, who had fought at Bunker Hill 68 years earlier. The cost to build the monument was $101,680, basically on budget.

Even before completion of the monument, its construction, as well as the development of the Granite Railway, led to granite finally becoming the preeminent building stone in Boston. Willard showed that large blocks could be used and transported, and by refining quarry techniques, he helped drive the price down by 75 percent. The popularity of the Quincy granite eventually led to 53 additional quarries opening around Quincy and gave the town its moniker, “The Granite City.”

A few remnants of the Granite Railway can still be at Willard's original quarry, as well as the Granite Rail Quarry. And the area is listed as a National Historic Place. Unfortunately, the great quarry was filled in several years ago with dirt from Boston's Big Dig.

Whales in the Kitchen

On the front page of the MSN.com site, there is a tantalizing story about whale fossils found in a kitchen countertop. The story links to a video about National Geographic-funded researchers (Episode 412---Looking Back; check listings for local air dates) studied slabs of limestone that had been discovered to contain the fossils. The stone was cut in Italy but came from Egypt.

The video starts by showing panels of what looks like Carrara marble and then describes how the masons noticed the fossils. We get a mason exclaiming how they had no idea what they had found, but fortunately they told someone who did, who then contacted Philip Gingerich, who in addition to studying Darwinius masillae, studies whales. Gingerich and team went to Egypt and confirmed that the whale fossils in the limestone slab were unusual. They also found fossils from mammals that lived 20 million years later, about 18-20 million years ago, but were not part of the stone being quarried.

The story illustrates several of my favorite aspects of building stones. One is how the quarries open up new areas for geologists to explore. Two, building stone has many stories to tell. And three, stone gets shipped around the world so it isn't odd to find Egyptian rock in an Italian quarry, which may then ship that stone to the United States. It's just too bad that the stone didn't really end up in a countertop.

"The Most Hideous Stone Ever Quarried"

As I noted in my previous blog posting about Stories in Stone, when my wife and I moved to Boston in 1996 from Utah, I went into rock withdrawal. So, like a good geologist should do, I began to seek out nearby rocks in the local buildings. One of my favorites was Harvard Hall on the Harvard campus.

Built in 1766, Harvard Hall is a stately Georgian structure that sits on a base of brownstone. I distinctly remember walking up to the building to look at the stone, which had succumbed to weathering. Making sure that no one was looking, I stroked the crumbling rock. Sand grains accumulated in my hand. They immediately transported me back to my beloved Utah.

Another use of brownstone, which shows how it can erode over time.

Although I had looked at brownstones for months it wasn’t until the sand grains of Harvard Hall nestled in my hand that I made the connection: what I had known as red rock in Utah, easterners called brownstone. Both are sandstone colored by iron, which in an oxygen-rich environment rusts and coats individual sand grains like the skin of an apple.

Used extensively in rowhouses in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, brownstone made these buildings elegant, yet simple, and with an air of permanence. They exemplify the density of urban life. Famous brownstone denizens have included Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, and Holly Golightly, from Breakfast at Tiffany's, as well as real people such as Edith Wharton and Edger Allen Poe.

Quarries near Portland, Connecticut, are the birthplace for brownstone. The stone’s popularity grew throughout the middle 1800s and peaked in the early 1890s though not everyone appreciated the somber colored stone. Edith Wharton referred to its popularity as a "universal chocolate-coloured coating of the most hideous stone ever quarried."

By the late 1890s, the clamor for brownstone was over, driven primarily by a fatal problem; water and salt could penetrate its layers. When water freezes it expands nine percent. Salt has a similar property but instead of expanding it grows. Both processes can wreak havoc on a building block.

The former Portland, CT quarries, now flooded.

Quarrying for brownstone ended in the 1920s. In 1993, however, an ex-coal miner named Mike Meehan opened a small quarry on a ledge north of the original quarries. He knew nothing about quarrying brownstone. “Being a coal miner, I was more adept at blowing things up,” says Meehan. “But at the end of the day, I knew I wanted to be small scale and to be making a product.”

Meehan’s first contract was for a restoration project at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. Institutions have continued to order his stone, which he has sent to Brown University, Yale, and Pratt Institute. In recent years, after acquiring his own milling saw, he has been providing detail pieces, such as steps and lintels, for more and more high end homes, including one in Brooklyn, which I visited.

Meehan's restoration in Brooklyn

Meehan cut the new blocks to emphasize the bedding planes of the Portland rock. Each block is different with a variation in grain size, color, and bed thickness. They have a warmth and substantial nature to them, unlike the adjacent restorations, which obtain their look with stucco.

As I sat across the street from Meehan’s brownstones, I was reminded of a comment he made at the quarry. “One hundred years from now when people see these buildings they will say ‘That’s a glorious building.’ That’s a good thing to me.”

The Giro and The San Pietrini

Wow! Yesterday was a stunning end to the Giro d’Italia, one of the world’s great bicycle races. And the excitement occurred because of stone, the legendary San Pietrini cobbles of Rome. With just under 1000 meters to go in the time trial, race leader Denis Menchov looked like he was ready to win not only the overall race title but also that day’s race, the last leg of the Giro.

But then Menchov’s front wheel slipped out from under him and he went tumbling at probably 50 km/hour. The thin tire couldn’t grip the hard lava stones, which come from outcrops near Rome. These are the stones I wrote about in a previous post that Vitruvius described as hard and enduring. Many reporters described them as icy smooth because of the rain. Locals call the cobbles, “San Pietrini,” little Saint Peters, playing on St. Peter’s role as the rock of Christianity.

I have an update to add on this blog. Marie Jackson, who has written extensively about the stones of Rome, has told me that the San Pietrini stone comes from the Capo di Bove lava flow, 277,000 +/- 2,000 years old. The lava erupted from the Faete peak of the Alban Hills volcano, southeast of Rome. Stone comes from a quarry near the Ciampino airport.

(Photo of the cobbles from VeloNews.
To see a video of the fall, you can watch this YouTube link.)

As Menchov fell, you could see him reaching out for his bike as he slid 10 meters along the San Pietrinis. Fortunately, his mechanic was in a car right behind him, and he leapt out of the car, yanked a spare bike off the top, sprinted to Menchov, and had him back riding within seconds. It was stirring and stunning to watch Menchov recover and ride to victory. Although it was exciting to see such a focus on building stone, I am glad they were not culprit that took away a well deserved victory by Dennis Menchov.

Stories in Stone: The Journey to Publishing

A journey that began several years ago has recently reached its end. That journey has led to the publication of my new book – Stories in Stone: Travels Through Urban Geology. A copy of it arrived in the mail the other day and it should be in book stores soon. The publisher is Walker & Company.

My interest in building stone began in 1986, when I first wrote about the sandstone used at my college. I realized I could make a connection between two passions of mine, geology and architecture. Furthermore, building stone was a way to tie together people and rock into compelling stories, what I later decided was John McPhee in reverse. Instead of going to the wilds to find geology, as McPhee did, I would go downtown to find the rocks and develop my stories from there.

Over the next ten years or so, I continued to seek out building stone stories, particularly in Seattle, where a series of rock-rich tunnels were built for public transportation. The stone was not only diverse it was beautiful. During the decade, I didn’t limit my geologic gazing to urban spaces. Living in Moab, Utah, I happened to notice that some rather stunning stone outcropped in the region. The red rock landscape made me even more fascinated with and passionate about geology so when my wife and I moved to Boston, I went into rock withdrawal.

I quickly turned back to my long interest in building stone and began to study the rocks that clad buildings in the Hub. I found sandstones, granites, slates, marbles, and travertine, and all of them had great geologic, as well as human, stories to tell. In 1997, I sold my first article on building stone, to the Harvard alumni magazine. Over the next few years, I wrote additional articles for in-flight magazines, newspapers, and kids magazines. Finally in 2005, I decided I either had to write a book or give up my interest in building stone.

I began by sending an eight-paragraph pitch to an agent a friend had recommend. She responded a day later and by the end of the week she had agreed to represent me. And then the work began. Ten, very long and often challenging months later my agent began to shop around the 57-page proposal she had helped me to write. About a week later we got our first response. Walker & Company liked the proposal. Within a few days several more publishers had expressed an interest. On September 28, 2006, we accepted Walker's offer and I began work on the book.

Writing Stories in Stone has been a wonderful journey for me. Along the way, I have met architects, historians, librarians, geologists, quarry workers, and stone masons. I have been fortunate to work with a supportive, helpful, and encouraging editor. People have gone out of their way to help me track down papers, to take me out in the field, and to show me the inner workings of the quarry business. Over the next few weeks, I plan to write a series of posts about the book. I hope to include photos and maps, background on the chapters, and links to more information.

National Park stone: Mt. Rainier

I recently spent a very sunny weekend up at Mt. Rainier. We stayed at the Paradise Inn. Built during 1916 and 1917, the historic lodge is on the national register of historic places. It is an A-shaped building, a shape necessary to withstand the average of over 600 inches of snow per year. From a geologic point of view, the most impressive features are the three massive fireplaces, two in the main lobby and one in the kitchen.

Fireplace in Paradise Inn at Mt. Rainier

Each fireplace is made of various sized rough blocks of what appears to be granodiorite from the Tatoosh pluton. The pluton ranges in age between 26 and 14 million years old. I could not, however, find any information about which rock was used. The stones reportedly came from a local quarry.

One feature that stands out on several blocks is the row of drill holes. They show how the quarrymen made blocks by drilling a line of several-inch deep holes and dropping in two metal shims, each of which was bent at the top so the shims wouldn’t disappear into the cavity. He would then drop a wedge of steel between the shims and pound the row of plugs until the rock split on the perforation.

Close up of Mr. Tarbox's plug and feather quarrying method

Quarrymen call this the plug and feather method. It has used by stone masons for thousands of years though it has an interesting story in the US. According to quarry historians, a man named Mr. Tarbox introduced the method in this country in 1803. His work was noticed by a member of the commission to build a new jail in the Boston area, who tracked down Tarbox, hired him on spot, and got him to teach the method to other builders in the region. That knowledge spread quickly and soon the price of cut stone dropped appreciably.

The plug and feather method is still in use though it has been modified significantly with hydraulic air drills and hydraulic expanders. In places such as the Indiana limestone building district, quarrymen no longer need to swing a hammer.

Down lower on Mt. Rainier, at Longmire, another building makes use of the local stone, too. The visitor center is built of large boulders that must have been collected from the nearby river. The boulders are andesite, granodiorite, welded tuff, and rhyolite. Builders even used the boulders to make the chimney.

Longmire visitor center at Mt. Rainier

These buildings are two of many wonderful national park structures that use local rock, most often with rough cut faces or as boulders. Does anyone have any other favorite national park buildings with local materials?