Tuckahoe marble is a high quality marble first quarried on a large commercial scale in 1822 in the village of Tuckahoe in Westchester County. The marble is from the larger Inwood Formation or deposit, which stretches northeasterly from mid-Manhattan through southern Westchester and into western Connecticut.[1] The marble is characterized scientifically as a dolomitic marble and varies in color from a light gray to light green, to a bluish white or brilliant white. A distinctive characteristic is the medium-to-coarse size of the calcite and dolomite particles that primarily compose the stone, which often contains minor amounts of hematite and pyrite. Oxidation of these iron-bearing minerals causes certain varieties of the marble to turn orange-brown when the stone is exposed to weather.[2]
History
Tuckahoe Marble Quarries exhibit
The vast majority of the early residential and commercial buildings in New York City were constructed with wood while government and institutional buildings and mansions of the wealthy were often built of brick or stone. Locally quarried Manhattan schist and sandstone from the lower Hudson Valley were typically used before marble became more popular. By the late 18th century, marble was being produced by a number of quarries in northern Manhattan and along the Hudson River in Westchester. The most well-known quarry that supplied stone from the deposit was in the area now known as Tuckahoe. This "Tuckahoe marble" was nearly pure white in color and considered by many to be of the highest grade.
Many federal buildings destroyed by the British during the War of 1812 were rebuilt with Tuckahoe marble. The commercial marble industry first developed along the Bronx River. In 1818 the Tuckahoe Marble Quarry opened and eventually became a major producer of marble for the world. These local marble quarries were the main reason that the state government of New York chose Sing Sing as the site of a new prison in 1825.[3]
White Tuckahoe marble supplied the early United States with a building material suitable for the neoclassical architecture popular in America's early public buildings. Tuckahoe Marble was the single most important white marble deposit in the country until the latter part of the 1800s, when development of the railroad made the extensive, high quality marble deposits of southwestern Vermont more available. Quarrying of Tuckahoe marble ceased in 1930.[where?]
Buildings and structures
Local
Local structures constructed of Inwood marble include:
Torres, Louis (1976), Tuckahoe Marble: The Rise and Fall of an Industry in Eastchester, New York, 1822-1930; Harrison, N.Y., Harbor Hill Books.
Urquhart, Gordon Ross (1986), The Architectural History of the Westchester Marble Industry; Unpublished Master's Thesis, School of Architecture, Columbia University.
