Building stone

“ Now and then a warning shout would come from the hill-side, and a rock would leap down, gathering speed, and rush across the road, split sometimes into a hundred fragments and useless, but for the most part—for the limestone was hard—a valuable building stone. ”

“ The use of stone for building might have arisen in many places independently. But megalithic architecture is something [145] much more than this. It is the use of great stones in certain definite and particular ways. We have already examined what may be called the style of megalithic architecture and found that the same features are noticeable in all countries where these buildings occur. In each case we see a type of construction based on the use of large orthostatic slabs, sometimes surmounted by courses of horizontal masonry, with either a roof of horizontal slabs or a corbelled vault. ”

“ Dressed in squared blocks and hammered lines, stone becomes an expensive building material, and preference is then given to something else less costly; but if used in its quarried form, irregular in size and shape, it becomes, wherever conveniently obtained, among the economical materials used for building, and is unsurpassed for its impressiveness and durability. ”

“ A little lower is the building-stone, which is a finer but scarcely divisible slate, and is employed in the construction of houses, after it has been sufficiently hardened by exposure to the air. At fourteen or fifteen feet from the surface is found the good slate, which has been quarried to the perpendicular depth of three hundred feet, without its lower limit being attained. The interior structure of the slaty mass is divided by many veins or seams of calcareous spar and quartz, fifteen or sixteen feet in length, by two feet thick ”

“ Our own English rocks, which supply excellent building stone from their thin and easily divisible beds, are for the most part entirely incapable of being worked into shafts of any size, except only the granites and whinstones, whose hardness renders them intractable for ordinary purposes;—and English architecture therefore supplies no instances of the block shaft applied on an extensive scale ”

“ When the building stone of which the houses are constructed is quarried, it is so soft that it can be easily moulded, or rather carved, into almost any desired shape, but exposure to the atmosphere hardens it gradually to the consistency of our American freestone. ”

“ The art of Masonry includes the sawing and cutting of stones into the various shapes required in the multiplied purposes of building, and in placing them in a proper manner in the walls and other parts of edifices. It is divided into two branches, one of which consists in bringing the stones to the desired form and polish, and the other, in laying them in mortar or cement.
2. The rocks most used in building in the United States, are marble, granite, greenstone, scienite, soap-stone, limestone, gypsum, and slate. ”

“ They do not use a structure of soft rubble polished on the outside, but whenever they forsake dimension stone, they lay courses of lava or of some hard stone, and, as though building with brick, they bind the upright joints by interchanging the direction of the stones as they lie in the courses. ”

“ In the first place it does not explain why exactly the same types of building (e.g. the dolmen) , showing so many similarities of peculiar detail, occur in countries so far apart; and in the second place, if what was carried by trade was the art of building alone, why should the learners go out of their way to use huge stones when smaller ones would have suited their purpose equally well? That the megalithic builders knew how to employ smaller stones we know from their work ”

“ Limestone, granite, and sandstone were used for building at a very remote period in much the same way as wood, large blocks, fresh from the quarry, of all manner of different shapes, being piled up horizontally or stood on edge, no cement being employed, though in certain cases crushed stone was used to fill up the spaces between the blocks. ”

“ This range-work facing, which presents in its way an attractive appearance, and whose rusticity contrasts with the smooth finish of the dressed stone, is backed with ordinary rubble walling. Thus, in districts where stone occurs naturally of this shape in the quarries, we get an economical building material. But it is puerile to amuse one’s self with making thin coursed-work where soft freestone abounds, and where it must be cut into little bits to obtain this appearance. ”

“ Where stone is conveniently obtained as a building material, its use in rural architecture deserves far more consideration than is usually bestowed on it; and in its unchiselled, quarried form it becomes desirable in an economical point of view. ”

“ The rock, which slopes toward the south-west, is cut into horizontal steps, into which are dovetailed, and united by a strong cement, Portland stone and granite. The whole to the hight of thirty-five feet from the foundation, is a solid body of stones, engrafted into each other, and united by every means of additional strength that could be devised. The building has four rooms, one over the other, and at the top a gallery and lantern. The stone floors are flat above, but concave beneath, and are kept from pressing against the sides of the building by a chain let into the walls. ”

“ The stone makes a fine building material, [37] as it is easily worked, attractive in appearance and very durable. But unfortunately it is at first quite porous, and newly-erected houses are dangerously damp until the rains of two or three winters have, on their way through the walls, first dissolved a certain amount of the stone and then deposited it in the interstices. ”

“ Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the building. And, in like manner, the Greek and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engraving, as if the face of the wall had been stamped with a seal, or its lines are flowing, lithe, and luxuriant ”

“ Again, as the forests depart, not only should we cherish what is left, but with the proceeds, before we are left naked, poor and desolate, we should plan and develop substitutes, tile and slate for shingle, cement, sand-brick and stone for building, stone, cement and steel bridges for wooden, and paving brick and macadam for cedar block and corduroy. ”

“ Such stone as has been damaged by the two years of exposure should be used in the foundations. The rest, which remains unhurt, has passed the test of nature and will endure in those parts of the building which are above ground. ”

“ The largest use of rock or stone is in the crushed form for road building, railway embankments, and concrete, and the prospect is for largely increased demands for such uses in the future. For the purpose of road building, it is necessary to consider a stone's resistance to abrasion, hardness, toughness, cementing value, absorption, and specific gravity. ”

“ For our gravel-pit, if it be, will possibly yield us another, and a more curious object. You most of you have seen, I dare say, large stones, several feet long, taken out of these pits. In the gravels and sands at Pirbright they are so plentiful that they are quarried for building-stone. And good building-stone they make; being exceedingly hard, so that no weather will wear them away. ”

“ The mineral resources consist chiefly of building-stone, including limestone, sandstone, granite and marble; besides slate, iron-ore, clay, bricks, tiles, mineral waters, salt, petroleum and natural gas. ”

“ But it does suggest, at least by a play upon words in several languages, a current climate of taste which favours béton brut—naked concrete—and rough, usually rather dark-coloured, materials. Bricks, pre-cast slabs with a coarse aggregate in relief, or even stone masonry of rubble or quarry-faced granite, with rather heavy trim of raw or varnished wood and wrought iron, are widely preferred to the slicker, more highly finished elements that are the natural product of the increasing industrialization of the building crafts. ”

“ From that came the occasional use of stone for the walls, where stone was easily to be found, or of brick, where there was clay convenient for the baking; but for very many years wood was the usual material for the building of all except the great houses, churches, castles, and the like. ”

“ MASONRY,1 the art of building in stone. The earliest remains (apart from the primitive work in rude stone—see Stone Monuments; Archaeology, &c.) are those of the ancient temples of India and Egypt. Many of these early works were constructed of stones of huge size, and it still remains a mystery how the ancients were able to quarry and raise to a considerable height above the ground blocks seven or eight hundred tons in weight. Many of the early buildings of the middle ages were entirely constructed of masses of concrete, often faced with a species of rough cast. ”

“ It is, in fact, a strong argument in favor of bricks in building, where they can be had as cheap as stone or wood, that any color can be given to them which the good taste of the builder may require, in addition to their durability, which, when made of good material, and properly burned, is quite equal to stone. ”

“ When the art of building had made some progress, brick, rubble, and stone came into general use; until finally, in their best works of art, their stone and marble columns and walls were distinguished by a solidity and accuracy of construction rarely since excelled. ”

“ Stone and brick, the principal materials in general construction, keep their places in combination by means of gravity. They may be merely packed together, but in general they are compacted by means of mortar or cement, so that although the main constituent materials are wholly incompressible, Stone.masses of either, or of both, combined in structures are compressible, until the setting medium has indurated to a like condition of hardness. That kind of stone is best fitted for the purposes of general construction which is least absorbent of moisture, and at the same time free to work. ”

“ Although, as we have said, it is impossible to cover the walls of a large building with color, except on the condition of dividing the stone into plates, there is always a certain appearance of meanness and niggardliness in the procedure. It is necessary that the builder should justify himself from this suspicion; and prove that it is not in mere economy or poverty, but in the real impossibility of doing otherwise, that he has sheeted his walls so thinly with the precious film. Now the shaft is exactly the portion of the edifice in which it is fittest to recover his honor in this respect. ”

“ Then come the floors, the roofs and roof-coverings, and finally the ceilings and the doors and windows. The materials used in building are principally timber, stone, slate, bricks, tiles, mortar, lime, cement, iron, glass, lead, zinc, colours and varnishes. Those with which the working bricklayer has most to do are bricks, slates, tiles, stonework, cement, and mortar, for these are principally used in making walls and roofs, which is the greater part of his trade. The stone and slate come from the quarries, and we have already seen how bricks are made. ”

“ Those who have seen the modern Arabs in excavation work move huge blocks with wooden levers and palm-leaf rope will realize that for the building of the dolmens little was needed except numbers and time.
The other method of moving the stones is as follows: a gentle slope of hard earth covered with wet clay is built with its higher extremity close beside the block to be moved. As many men as there is room for stand on each side of the block, and with levers resting on beams or stones as fulcra, raise the stone vertically as far as possible. ”

“ CHAPTER XIX. SUPERIMPOSITION.
§ I. The reader has now some knowledge of every feature of all possible architecture. Whatever the nature of the building which may be submitted to his criticism, if it be an edifice at all, if it be anything else than a mere heap of stones like a pyramid or breakwater, or than a large stone hewn into shape, like an obelisk, it will be instantly and easily resolvable into some of the parts which we have been hitherto considering: its pinnacles will separate themselves into their small shafts and roofs ”

“ In the choice of a stone for building purposes, it is of the utmost importance to be able to determine, by a few prompt and easy experiments, whether the proposed stone is capable of resisting the destructive action of moisture and frost. ”

“ Where, on the other hand, marble is abundant and good, refinement is to be met with, for no other building material exists in which very delicate mouldings or very slight or slender projections may be employed with the certainty that they will be effective. Where stone is scarce, brick buildings, with many arches, roughly constructed cornices and pilasters, and other peculiarities both of structure and ornamentation, make their appearance, as, for example, in Lombardy and North Germany. ”

“ When, therefore, suitable stone of both qualities can be obtained, the harder stone can be exposed to the weather, or to the action which the softer stone cannot resist, and made to form the main body of the structure of the latter so protected. The hard and the soft should be made to bear alike, and should therefore be coursed and bonded together by the mason’s art, whether the work be of stone wrought into blocks and gauged to thickness, or of rough dressed or otherwise unshaped rubble compacted with mortar. ”