When Chicagoans walk or drive past the stately Indiana limestone building located just a half mile west of Lake Michigan in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, they might wonder why the building is guarded by a pair of identical life-sized bronze elk. Little do they know that inside this circular building is one of the finest natural stone installations in the United States, featuring over twenty-seven varieties of marble.

Historic photo of the Elks National Memorial Headquarters Building.

The Elks National Memorial Headquarters Building was commissioned by the Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks, one of the oldest and largest fraternal organizations in the United States, and dedicated to the memory of Elks who served in World War I. The monumental building, built in the classical Beaux-Arts style and based on the aesthetic and architectural design principles taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, was completed in 1926 and designed by Egerton Swartwout, best known for his work on monumental buildings and memorials, including the Missouri State Capitol.

We often focus on new buildings or remodeling projects and how to incorporate natural stone into the designs, but rarely do we pause to consider the beauty of structures that have withstood the test of time. Revisiting nearly century-old structures is a great reminder of natural stone’s sustainability and longevity.

When asked to discuss the style of the Memorial, architect Egerton Swartwout explained in a 1922 article of The Elks Magazine, “I might say it was classic, and more Roman than Greek; I would prefer to say it was modern, and that it was American.”

From the outside, the building looks dramatic and impressive. Walk through a 20-foot-high single arched bronze doorway and be ready for a visual feast. While many parts of the interior are of note, the crown jewel is Memorial Hall, which serves both the building’s main interior space and architectural focal point.

Memorial Hall: 27 Varieties of Marble from Around the World

The ground floor of Memorial Hall. Photo courtesy of Megy Karydes.

Memorial Hall soars to the total height of the building at 100 feet and the gilded dome above is remarkable, as is the marble found throughout the room, literally from top to bottom.

The space incorporates 27 varieties of marble and the National Association of Marble Dealers considered it “one of the finest marble installations in the United States” in a story about the building in its August 1926 trade magazine, Through the Ages.  From the marble floor to the second tier columns above as well as the 48 columns encircling the room and supporting the balcony, it’s like a showroom dedicated to marble from around the world.

“The basis marble,” wrote Swartwout in an issue of American Architect in the mid-1920s,

27 varieties of marble, as seen in the Memorial Hall.

“will be warmly tinted, slightly veined white marble, while the shafts of the columns are of the richly veined colored marble lighter in tone for the small order, as these columns are seen against the white marble background, Pavonazzo, Skyros, Cippolino, and five or six other varieties; and the upper columns are heavier and deeper in tone, Levanto, Tinos, Rouge Jasper, Verona, Alps Green. In the floor, which is a series of round and square panels, the same variety is followed. The coffered ceiling will be deep in tone and rich with color and gold and bronze figure in the niches should combine to make a very powerful but subdued effect.”

Sourcing Marble for Such a Grand Project

Sourcing the marble for such a massive space was no small feat.

A year and a half was spent securing, selecting and preparing all of the colored marbles used in Elks Memorial and the marble alone cost $578,000, according to the National Association of Marble Dealers 1926 article.

“Both color and soundness had to be carefully considered, as well as the size of the blocks and veining,” the article notes. “This marble installation affords a striking illustration of a fact that is frequently overlooked by the architect: that where any large work is in prospect, the marble should be ordered at least a year ahead, in order to allow time for the special quarrying necessary.”

Inside the Memorial Hall.

The marble was sourced from quarries throughout Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy and the United States, including Vermont and Alabama. Beyond the gorgeous and striking marble columns, the walls around the rotunda and in the circular corridors, domes and some ceilings feature Eastman’s Cream marble from the quarries at West Rutland, Vermont. “This cream marble has a very soft texture that makes it suitable for intricate decorations and fine statuary and carving,” according to the article in Through the Ages. “Twenty-two thousand cubic feet of this particular material were required and in order to secure exact uniformity of tone, and the true cream color desired, it was necessary to take out two entire floors of the quarry — a total of about 150,000,000 cubic feet of marble.”

Yet, despite the size of the marble contract for this project, one mill handled the whole job.

At the time of its construction, few circular buildings had been built, save for the Pantheon in Rome and some smaller temples. “Because of the circular design, construction of the Memorial Hall was particularly difficult and called for extreme care, since all masonry, all brick and stone work had to be laid on a radius. Almost every piece of stone has a curved surface. The size of each piece was worked out, in advance, on the drawings, and each piece was numbered to correspond with its numbers on the plans. The manufacturing plant, at Carthage, Mo., where the stone was cut and finished, made every piece to fit into the mosaic as a whole, a job requiring the strictest accuracy,” according to The Elks Magazine article from July 1926.

The Elks National Memorial Headquarters Building may originally been dedicated to those who served in World War I but it’s since been re-dedicated to honor all American veterans serving in all later wars and conflicts. An enduring war memorial, it continues to exemplify fine craftsmanship with its use of luxurious building materials including limestone, marble, and bronze.

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In Barre, Vermont, less than 10 miles from the state capital of Montpelier, residents take the town’s unofficial designation as Granite Center of the World to heart. The Vermont Granite Museum honors the legacy of the local stone industry, for instance, while a 23-foot-high statue of an Italian stone carver, chisel and hammer in hand, honors the thousands of immigrant artisans whose contributions came to define the region.

Granite, specifically the local variation of stone known as Barre Gray, represents a way of life, and at Hope Cemetery, a way to celebrate life.

The city-run cemetery sits on 65 acres and is home to more than 10,000 tombstones, monuments, and memorials. Nevertheless, Hope is viewed less as a collection of tombstones than an open-air museum gallery of Barre Gray sculptures so intriguing that tours are offered.

It’s not the first cemetery to offer tours or show up on visitors’ lists of must-see attractions. Pére Lachaise in Paris, France, and Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles are just two TripAdvisor favorites, primarily for the famous people who are interred there. At Hope Cemetery, however, the focus is on the stones and the stories they tell. Whimsy, pathos, heartbreak, eccentricity, and inspiration are all conveyed in granite. No two are alike.

The first granite quarry opened in Barre in 1812, but it was the arrival of the railroad in the late 1800s that had a transformative effect on the industry. Business exploded. Skilled stonecutters from places like Italy, Scotland, Scandinavia, and Canada came by the thousands, and by the turn of the last century dozens of quarries were in operation.

Barre Gray granite is known for its fine grain, consistent color and thermal stability. There’s something else, too. According to Ilene Gillander, it twinkles in sunlight.

Ilene Gillander during a tour at Hope Cemetery.

Gillander leads group and private tours of Hope Cemetery. A retired high school English teacher and drama coach, Gillander says: “It may purely be the drama teacher in me, but there’s something in the stone that really draws you to it. It’s a mystical thing, a magical thing. It’s not just a piece of rock. You want to know more about it,” she says. “That’s the feeling I want to transmit to guests, that there’s something very special about this stone and this cemetery.”

She came to Barre from her native Delaware in 1972 to begin her teaching career. The very first day she set foot in a classroom a student told her that if she wanted to understand her new hometown, Gillander needed to visit Hope Cemetery. “I knew nothing about the area, but it got to me. I knew I had to be involved somehow, even if I wasn’t yet sure how.”

Decades later she has become a Barre ambassador. “It’s not a job but a delight to share the love this community has for stone with people from all over the world,” she says.

Gillander says many out-of-towners come by way of group bus tours that are combined with a visit to the mammoth Rock of Ages quarry in nearby—and aptly named—Graniteville. “I can tell by looking at their faces, they’re thinking: ‘Why is this tour manager bringing me to a cemetery?’ But my goal is that by end of the tour they’ll feel uplifted. Hope Cemetery embodies the spirit and the heart of our town. It’s absolutely properly named.”

The tombstones of this still-active cemetery tell life-affirming stories about the hobbies, loves, and passions of those interred there. There are graves marked by a soccer ball, a skyward-facing biplane, and a half-scale race car so detailed you can see the carved undercarriage. They’re all sculpted from Barre Gray granite. There’s a large headstone depicting a couple in bas-relief sitting up in bed, holding hands for all eternity. And there’s a statue of a man seemingly taking his last breath. It is of and by the celebrated stone carver Louis Brusa who suffered from an illness common among stone carvers called silicosis. The often fatal lung ailment was caused by the granite dust carvers inhaled until ventilation systems reduced the hazard in the 1930s. A woman holds Brusa in her arms.

“Whatever you can think of can be designed,” says Gillander.

Hope Cemetery was established in 1895 and designed by landscape architect Edward Adams. At one time, it was a place families congregated on Sundays. Children would play and the adults would wander the grounds, looking at whatever new stones had been erected since their last visit. Many visitors were stone carvers themselves who would happily show off their creations while admiring the work of their colleagues. “There was a tremendous sense of pride,” Gillander says. For today’s generation it is a reminder of a time when thousands of Europeans and Canadians came to Barre with their traditions and work ethic, turning the little New England town into an international melting pot. They brought, too, priceless gifts: original works of art that bear not the names of the artists but of the recipients.

Ilene Gillander is one of the beneficiaries.

Gillander has picked out her spot in the cemetery and selected her stone. In fact, it’s already erected with her name and birthdate etched into the granite. “People in Barre have a feeling that comes with being here,” she says, “which is why when I go, I want to be in Hope.”

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As a student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I vividly remember trying to avoid using the elevated walkways when it rained. It wasn’t because the convenient web that connected certain lecture halls, the main Forum (where the cafeteria was housed), the Science and Engineering Labs, and even the parking lots and athletic fields didn’t provide protection from the rain, it was because the hunter green granite used was as useful as a water slide.

Crushed granite is often used for walkways in parks or other frequently-used paths like roadways and patios because it’s inexpensive, and is easy to shovel and spread. UIC’s elevated walkways were made using 10 by 20 feet and one-foot-thick Minnesota granite slabs 20 feet above the ground. This was perhaps not the best choice, since it became dangerously slippery when wet.

Today, only memories like mine exist, since the walkways were removed in 1999 to make way for a greener, more welcoming campus environment. What happened to all that granite once the walkways were demolished? Records and anecdotal evidence suggest the granite damaged during the demolition was donated to the City of Chicago, which in turn used it to build an artificial reef in Lake Michigan, at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, about eight miles south of the campus. The artificial reef would help with erosion issues.

A Different Sustainability Journey: Extracting Only What You Need

Diagram of a stone block. Photo courtesy of Coldspring.

The beauty of natural stone is there is always a use for it, even when it’s past its prime or its need changes. UIC’s former walkways found a second life as an artificial reef, but they just as soon could have ended up in the landfill.

Some businesses, like Minnesota-based Coldspring, have an entire sustainability mindset and are working to be environmentally-responsible stone producers.

Coldspring’s 2020 initiative, for example, is to use everything it extracts from the earth which directly impacts the quantity of land affected by extraction and processing. It hopes to achieve this goal by the year 2020.

Coldspring Mesabi Black quarry.

The company recognizes that while stone is a natural resource, the way it is quarried, processed, transported, and used has a significant bearing on the environment. To help with their goal, they’re enlisting architects and designers by taking the time to educate them on how certain designs can influence how much of the stone they can use, according to Coldspring.

It’s important to note that quarrying natural dimension stone is more efficient and offers higher yields when compared to mineral extraction. Still, small improvements in yield and making sure every stone removed from the ground can be used upon extraction improves environmental performance.

What doesn’t get used as larger pieces can be crushed and used in a variety of different ways, says Coldspring, from rip rap for bridges to cremation gardens. What’s important to consider is that the use still has to be structurally sound. One cannot simply take stone used for another project, crush it, and reuse for anything.

Vermont Verde Antique quarry.

“Almost all of our excess stone is used for rip rap along highway banks and river banks by both state and federal contractors,” says Mike Solari of Vermont-based Vermont Verde Antique. “Occasionally, when Verde Antique is torn off a building, someone will use it for pavers on a patio or walkway.”

The green serpentine stone quarry specializes in slabs, dimensional, cut to size, and tile, adds Solari. “We also have artists use small and large blocks for carving and landscapers will pick unique looking blocks for accent pieces on their projects.  Vermont Verde can be used for both interior and exterior projects, so there are limitless possibilities.”

The Riverside Roundabout: Using Natural Stone to Help the Environment

Riverside Roundabout. Photo courtesy of Makena Hunt supplied by Coldspring.

Much has been discussed about how to be mindful when quarrying or using stone, but using natural stone as a way to help the environment isn’t as top of mind.

The Riverside Roundabout, a recent Coldspring project, allowed the company to participate in a true zero-waste project.

The first modern roundabout in Los Angeles, the roundabout was designed to help control smog and exhaust impacts on surrounding residents. The centerpiece of the roundabout, designed by Greenmeme Art & Design Studio, provides an artistic experience through nine egg-shaped stone sculptures constructed of Academy Black® granite from California. Measuring 8 to 12 feet tall each, all parts of the granite slabs were used to create the sculptures, which feature the faces of individuals from the community, randomly chosen throughout two years.

In addition to the egg-shaped sculptures, there is a stone wall around the perimeter and part of the reason it was added was because the team wanted to use all of the natural stone extracted for this project.

Riverside-Roundabout.-Photo-courtesy-of-Makena-Hunt-supplied-by-Coldspring.

The roundabout serves as a stormwater bioretention landscape with the capacity to capture and treat a 10-year rainfall event (500,000 gallons) off an adjacent bridge and roads, according to the project’s reported details. The system also includes a 25,000-gallon cistern supplying a water feature as well as a solar tracking photovoltaic system powering irrigation, lighting and the artwork.

The Riverside Roundabout was a 100-percent sustainable project.

Designing Headstones | A Legacy For Your Loved One

When Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks died in January 2015, his burial site was shrouded in secrecy, no doubt to give his family and friends time to grieve. Today, baseball fans who want to pay their respects to #14 can find his final resting place just half a mile from Wrigley Field. His grave is currently marked with an elegant, understated black granite shaft. In the works is a new monument, close to six feet tall and more elaborate than the temporary one, according to Jensen Allen, associate director of Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. “It’s in a baseball diamond shape,” she adds, and then goes mum. She’s unable to divulge anything more.

The temporary marker for Ernie Banks.

To be sure, it’s unusual for so much secrecy to surround a cemetery marker. Then again, Graceland Cemetery, designed by landscape architects and a Level II Certified Arboretum, is the final resting place to many of the city’s most prominent figures. It’s also considered the cemetery of architects, which is one of the reasons Henry H. Kuehn, author of Architects’ Gravestones: A Serendipitous Guide and a trustee of the historic cemetery, was surprised to discover how few of the men and women whose work transformed the face of America didn’t take the same initiative to design the marker for their final resting place.

“Perhaps, like most people, they never really thought about dying and how they were going to be commemorated,” explains Kuehn. “That’s not to say there aren’t a handful of people who put a lot of thought into it and designed some exquisite things, but in most cases, it was really their families who followed through and did something that they felt would be appropriate for the architect.”

In the case of Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan’s partner in the firm of Adler & Sullivan, his monument is capped with a great column taken from Chicago’s Central Music Hall, a building Adler designed that was torn down the same year as his death. It’s a unique example of an architect being commemorated with an actual artifact from one of his designs. His resting place is at Mt. Mayriv Cemetery in Chicago.

In other cases, memorials really were an afterthought. After apprenticing with other architects, Louise Bethune, credited with being the country’s first woman architect who opened an architectural office with her husband in 1881, is buried next to her husband beneath a headstone bearing only his name. Since then, the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects arranged for the installation of a plaque that includes her accomplishments and contributions. She’s buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo, New York.

Dankmar Adler’s memorial.

Designing a Cemetery Marker

Kuehn believes people don’t think about cemeteries, where they’re going to be buried, or how they’re going to be memorialized.

“So often it’s left in the hands of those around them to come up with something they feel is a significant marker for them,” he says. “In a lot of cases, even among architects, they didn’t even have a plot or a cemetery. I thought there would be something unique about architects—that they wanted to be remembered in a certain way.”

He would learn through his research that very few architects made their wishes known. Others didn’t want to have markers at all. “They just wanted to be part of the land and part of the area they grew up in and loved,” he says.

Allen agrees. People are living longer, and death is no longer at the forefront of society, as it has been in the past. “Most people are not thinking about those details and planning them as they used to,” she says, adding that designing a final marker is among those details overlooked.

Family members who want to have a marker designed must first understand what’s permitted in the cemetery, according to Allen. Due to limited space and maintenance concerns, Graceland Cemetery only permits flat flush single stones for new burials.

Another factor to consider is timing. A large monument will naturally take more time and cost more to create since it’s larger and more complicated than a flat flush marker.

During a non-busy time for the monument maker, a marker can take anywhere from three months to five years, says Allen. She shares the story of one man who has been working on his own marker for more than four years. His partner passed away and Allen believes that working on his own marker is part of his grieving process. This isn’t unusual—designing a final marker is an emotional process.

For those who want an artisan-designed monument or marker, many companies welcome visitors to their studios and carving facilities to learn about the art of stone carving and view the process of how a memorial is made.

A mausoleum at Graceland Cemetery.

The Beauty of Natural Stone

The vast majority of markers are made of stone in one way or another. “The thing that struck me about the stone is there really is no such thing as [one kind of] stone,” says Kuehn. “Everyone used a slightly different color stone, slightly different variety of stone, it was finished in different ways, or it was embossed in different ways. There was just an enormous variety of applications using essentially the same material.”

Since markers and monuments tend to be more architectural than sculptural, perhaps it’s no surprise that the Graceland Trustees and Ernie Banks’ widow worked with an architect to design his monument. According to Kuehn, the ideas were developed in tandem and will be executed by a local stone company.

Part of the reason for working with an architect is because they wanted guidance in terms of placement and what would look good in this place in relationship to its surroundings. “In the case of Ernie Banks, it’s a marker with several things that are added on to it, like a baseball glove and a baseball bat and a baseball base,” says Kuehn. “Those sorts of things. It’s not really a sculptural work, it’s more architectural work.”

Architects devote much of their lives conceiving structures that often outlast them and admired for generations to come. In some cases, their mark really is eternal.

The National Building Stone Database is a central repository for information about the stones used in American buildings and monuments.

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Minnesota Capitol Renovation | Restoring Stone Elements

The restoration of the Minnesota State Capitol restoration began in 2013. Photo courtesy of Polycor.

After a century of active use, almost any building will begin expressing the groans of advanced aging, with internal and external structures steadily failing. The Minnesota State Capitol building was no exception. In 2013, the centenarian structure, constructed in 1905 by Cass Gilbert, had reached a severe deterioration point. Its crumbling façade, with chunks of marble threatening to fall and injure visitors, became particularly dangerous.

To preserve the architectural integrity of this historic building, the 158,225 occupied square foot Capitol is undergoing a $309.674 million, three-plus-year extensive renovation, repair, and restoration. The project, expected to be completed in late 2017, will also update mechanical structures and add visitor space. When finished, this will be among the largest and most complex restoration projects to take place in the United States.

The project used over 6,000 cubic feet of White Georgia marble; the same stone that was used in the building’s original construction. Photo courtesy of Polycor.

Materials from Original Quarries Recreates History and Creates Excitement

Joe Becker, Vice President of Twin City Tile and Marble’s Stone Division in Eagan, MN, noted that there were strict standards involved for choosing contractors on this project, including  significant experience in particular aspects of the renovation project and partners who could provide stone fabricating services.

“We were responsible for all aspects of procuring the Georgia marble over a four-year duration,” Becker explained. That included sourcing, fabrication, field measuring, templates, pricing, maintaining the schedule and ornamental carving.

In any historic restoration project, the goal is to maintain the integrity of the building by choosing materials that closely match the original. The Capitol restoration is unique in that the architects were able to source the same White Georgia marble that was selected by Cass Gilbert over 100 years ago. In total, the project used 6,022 cubic feet of White Georgia marble (nearly 4,000 new stones) sourced from Polycor’s quarry in Tate, Georgia.

Sylvie Beaudoin, Project Manager for Polycor, was responsible for making sure the project ran effortlessly even before onsite work began. She was responsible for making sure the quality of stone was adequate, including selecting raw materials from the quarry and getting large blocks cut into specific thicknesses for multiple profiles were required.”

Beaudoin coordinated transport of miniblocks of marble from Georgia to Carrara, Italy, where they were carved by Italmarble Pocai. According to Managing Director Agostino Pocai: “For two years, it was a continuous flow of crates flying across the Atlantic Ocean: blocks Eastward, carvings westward.” In total, 373 capitals and 105 trims were carved in Italy.

Stone masons and carvers restored stone onsite during the project. Photos courtesy of Twin City Tile and Marble.

Restoring Natural Stone Elements Beautifully is a Key Project Focus

Staying true to Cass Gilbert’s vision of a functional and open building and keeping the structure that way for the next 100 years of use has been a critical focus of the project. Consequently, the preservation commission’s commitment to architectural and historical integrity wasn’t only to installing new stone. Equally important was restoring the damaged or deteriorating pieces. As such, significant effort has been dedicated to restoration.

The architects and preservation commission wanted to conserve as much of the original material as possible. Stone that was deemed repairable was restored onsite by stone masons and carvers from Twin City.  Margaret “Mimi” Moore, Master Stone Carver, commented: “I have had the privilege of carving stone for almost ten perecent of the US capitols. Twin City Tile and Marble’s attention to detail was so great, they had an almost null error rate.” Stone that required replacement was categorized and templated, then dispersed between Tennessee Marble Company (Friendsville, TN) and Cutting Edge Stone (Alpharetta, GA).

Stone masons and carvers restored stone onsite during the project. Photos courtesy of Twin City Tile and Marble.

“It’s an intricate, time-consuming art to take the new and blend it with the old,” says Beaudoin. “It was amazing how they made the new stone flow and fit into the building.” She was impressed by the craftsmanship of the Twin City carvers and team to make the new natural stonework blend seamlessly with the existing white marble. Like an intricate puzzle, each restored piece was numbered and placed according to the architect’s plan back onto the fascia.

Preserving Natural Stone Elements Honors History

More than working on another construction project, the contractors felt honored to walk on hallowed ground as they stepped into the shoes of the state capitol’s original builders. Preserving what they did was essential because not doing so represented a loss of history.

Monica Gawet, President of Tennessee Marble Company, believes that natural stone was critical to this project: “Not only is natural stone Incredibly unique and made by nature, not by man, but a building is also like a life. It represents a quarry, a location, the history of a community.”

“Because it is part of the community’s history and culture, we should repair, restore, and improve the building but not alter its integrity,” Beaudoin said. “It has to last for many more generations. A project like this becomes part of you, and you’re proud of what you did to help restore someone else’s history.”

Coordinating a Monumental Project Required Teamwork

The success of the Minnesota State Capitol renovation depended largely on the extensive collaboration of the companies involved. The project included seven MIA+BSI member companies: Polycor, Twin City Tile and Marble, Italmarble Pocai, Tennessee Marble Company, Cutting Edge Stone, Bonstone, and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates. Jessica Ward, Project Manager for Cutting Edge Stone, commented: “Looking back on the project, the most important thing I want to take away for myself and for our company is the level of teamwork demonstrated by everyone involved. With the right team of determined, passionate individuals and a positive attitude, even the most monumental of tasks is possible.”

In January 2017, the companies involved in this project were honored with the Grande Pinnacle Award, which is given to the best overall project in all categories of the MIA+BSI Pinnacle Awards. As one Pinnacle Award judge commented: “The number of disciplines working together on this project is exemplary and shows overall quality throughout. You can’t tell where one contractor’s scope ends and another starts—this is true teamwork.”

A grand opening for the newly restored Minnesota State Capitol is scheduled for August 11-13.

The Minnesota State Capitol. Photo courtesy of Polycor.

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