Of Yankee granite

by Edward Herbert Cameron

With his usual generosity, Daniel Webster presented the copyright of his famous speech to the Bunker Hill Monument Association. The copyright was sold for $600, which was the second largest single contribution up to that date.

The Leading Character

Solomon Willard, architect and superintendent of the Bunker Hill Monument, developed the methods for the quarrying, dressing, transporting, and erecting the huge stones of the monument that started granite on its way to becoming a principal material for massive structures in America for half a century, until reinforced concrete took over. (Today, granite is used extensively as a protective facing for concrete, for highway curbing, and for memorials.)

It is impressive to note the universal respect for the integrity and ability of this early American architect which all the records of the monument stress. In the drama of the building of the Bunker Hill Monument, he played the leading part, and his character resembled the sturdy structure which he designed in detail and erected. During his 18 years of service in the construction of his masterpiece, the Bunker Hill Monument, he would accept no recompense except for his expenses, deeming it his duty to work without pay on such a patriotic venture. He was also a substantial contributor to the building fund.

A self-educated man, who had learned architecture with sufficient thoroughness to become a teacher in the subject, he had also become proficient in the various sciences. Starting as a carpenter, Willard had proved both his craftsmanship and artistry by becoming an adept carver of ships’ figureheads and models, including a model of the Capitol at Washington.

At the time the monument was begun, Willard was one of the leading architects of Boston. Typical of an architect’s versatility, he had played an important part in the change from the heating of buildings by wood-burning fireplaces and Franklin stoves, to hot-air furnaces, using either wood or coal. As an expert in furnace heat, he was called in for advice in the design of the heating system of America’s most important building, when the President demanded that the national Capitol should have adequate heat.

Appointed in October, 1825, to the combined position of architect and superintendent, Willard spent the following winter on the plans, models, and computations required to develop the construction details, from the over-all dimensions of the Baldwin Report. During these preliminary steps, Willard experimented with a promising machine for dressing the stones. The selection of the Bunker Hill Quarry in Quincy, Mass., was made after Willard had made a careful search for suitable stone, in which he was said to have walked 300 miles. The right to quarry, at Quincy, sufficient granite for the monument was purchased for $325. Part of the amount to be provided by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was to have been supplied by the cost of the dressing of the stone (then called “hammering”) by the convicts of nearby Charlestown State Prison. The convicts, however, were obviously not sufficiently independent to work on this shrine of independence, so this procedure was not adopted.

Up-To-Date Quarry (Circa 1825–1843)

From various old American and English records of masonry construction, it is possible to construct an account of how the stones for the Bunker Hill Monument must have been quarried and dressed. The old names are used for the tools and methods, and the modern mason will find many of these old descriptions quite familiar.

The hornblende granite of the Quincy region was (and is) of very uniform texture and varies only in color, from gray to dark gray. In Quincy, Willard would find that both “sheet” and “boulder” quarry formations occurred: the joints in the ledge of the sheet areas making the granite appear as if stratified, and hence more easily removed; but the huge, rounded boulders in the other areas, measuring up to 40 feet across, had no joints. Rows of holes were drilled by hand (at least 25 years would elapse before practical power-rock drills became available) and large blocks loosened from the ledge or boulder, probably by wedges, possibly by light blasts of gunpowder. At this stage the quarried block was called “quarry-pitched.” Stone of the smaller size for the monument was split from these blocks along lines of holes in which wedges were driven. These were probably of the plug-and-feather type, in which an iron wedge with an acute angle is fitted between two semicircular iron feathers, which taper in the opposite direction to that of the wedge, and thus fit the hole drilled in the stone, nicely. Granite has no cleavage planes, like slate; but a routine of smart taps on the plugs, back and forth along the line, soon splits the stone along a fairly smooth face. Two lewises (an ancient device), attached at about the quarter points of the top of the stone, were used to lift it. Three members make the lewis: a flat center bar with an eye at the top, the center bar being flanked by two wedge-shaped side pieces which are thicker at the bottom of the hole, and these also have eyes at the top. The wedges are inserted first, then the center bar slipped between; thereafter any lifting pull on the three bars is bound to expand the lewis to fill the hole and lift the stone, for the hole is drilled wider at the bottom than at the top.