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| The idea for this web site began when I found some Connecticut sandstone, an entire mansion of it, on top of a hill in San Francisco, thousands of miles from its natural setting. I eventually learned that the James Flood Mansion has a geological history like no other building, which deserved to be written down. It soon struck me that other buildings had interesting histories of their own hidden within their walls. I chose the most interesting handful I could find, and the project began. Its purpose is twofold: to use these buildings and their stone to teach people some of the basics of geology, and to show how human and geological history are intertwined in the making of buildings and cities. |
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Unlike the spectacular rock formations of places like Utah, the sort of thing that most of us think of as "geology", building stone is often ignored. In modern cities, the bottom floors of buildings are often covered by ugly storefronts, and the beauty of the building starts on the second floor. The granite or sandstone of the upper stories, or fancy marble in the lobby, are much older, often by hundreds of millions of years, than the building. It is a window back in time to the roots of mountains that rose and fell before anything had evolved to walk on them; to rivers and seas long gone, of which nothing remains but the sparkle of mica in sandstone; or to the crushing force of a continental collision. Sometimes the stone can be easily recognized as local, and its hidden history known. Other stones may be exotic imports, brought to mansions or public buildings at great expense. Noticing these things is its own reward, part of the pleasure of discovering a city. |
| Stone endures longer than any other building material. It preserves our history, and can outlast human memory. Stonehenge remains, long after the reason for building it has been forgotten. At the same time, our buildings, monuments, and art are shaped by the stone at our disposal in a given place. In ancient times, especially, people had to use what was nearby. English castles change from east to west with the great NE-SW stripes of sandstone and limestone that lie beneath them. Not only the buildings, but the city itself grows out of its natural setting. Cities begin where there is something that people can't do without: water to drink, a defensible hill, access to the sea, or excellent soil. Skyscrapers need solid rock to stand on. Unstable slopes must be shored up. Highways must be blasted through hills. And frequently, the city sits uneasily on the earth: mudflows plow neighborhoods down southern California canyons, earthquakes level Kobe or San Francisco, and Vesuvius looms above Naples, capable of burying that city in ash and pumice as it buried Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 A.D. |
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I hope that this web page will allow the reader to use stone as a window into history and to discover (or rediscover) the hidden story of the city around them. |
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