An Industrial Boom

There is the Rutland Tool Company that grew out of this. They were building machines for the quarry system. You can see these stamps on the hitch crane outside. I think it says Rutland Tool Company on it. So that was built in Rutland. So there was steel manufacturing, tool manufacturing, polishing, and there was mortar. They were cooking the marble to make lime for mortar just to build the buildings they were making. The Vermont Marble Company, at the height of operation, was taking 170 million pounds [of marble] per year.

 

A White Capitol

A lot of the political cartoons of the day show Senator Proctor, anytime he is drawn for the newspapers, carrying a slab of marble. And that’s what he did. That’s why Washington D.C. is marble, because of Senator Proctor selling his material to the government for use in its buildings. It’s the same game, “I have a company. I work for the government. I’m going to use my company to pay myself.” It hasn’t changed at all, ever.

 

160 Million Dollars

At today’s value, the stock that was available would have been worth about 160 million dollars. Whatever that translates to back then, that’s the value of the material. So when you think of the Vermont Marble Company pulling in that much capital, it really was a huge impact on the state.

 

A Fading Industry

The fall of the marble industry here really came about for a number of reasons. There’s not really one that does it on its own. Part of it is competition with other marble sources. So this site here, the West Rutland marble, is relatively soft. It’s a very fine-grained marble which makes it really nice for carving, but it doesn’t weather particularly well. So monuments, building facing, all that stuff- it tends to wear out. It sugars. So Danby marble is a much larger crystal. Even though Danby is only 25 miles south of here, it’s just a different type of marble with a larger crystal. So competition for marble types is one. The advent of industrial diamond, being able to cheaply manufacture industrial diamond and diamond tooling in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, made it possible to cut granite cheaper and faster than you ever could before. Granite doesn’t soak up the water, doesn’t get damaged by acids and pollutants, doesn’t change colors like the marble does, so you really granite taking over as the industrial stone. The other thing is you just don’t’ build buildings out of solid stone anymore. Part of that is just the change in the way people are building, what they are using for materials, and part of that is coming out of the Art Nouveau movement in Europe catching on over here and using steel and glass instead.