Popular Science Monthly 



689 



Giant Slabs of Marble to Commemorate 

 Abraham Lincoln 



THK largest stone in the great 

 Lincoln Memorial has been swung 

 into place. There are three of these 

 slabs of marble all of the same size, and 

 they arc reputed to be the largest ever 

 set in any structure in this country. 

 Each is more than six feet high and more 

 than nineteen feet long and weighs about 

 twenty-eiglit tons. 



The big blocks came from a quarry in 

 Colorado which is situated just below 

 the perpetual snow-line of the Rockies, 

 on the eastern slope of the Great Divide. 

 It is the boast of this quarry that it 

 can get out in one solid mass a 

 block of marble as big as any derrick 

 can lift. The fact is that modern 

 mechanical appliances for the hoist- 

 ing of giant slabs have transformed 

 quarrying. While the old- 

 time quarrymen worked under 

 unfavorable conditions, and 

 occasionally succeeded in ship- 

 ping a large slab to a cus- 

 tomer, the modern man works 

 with improved apparatus and 

 deals in tons instead of 

 pounds. The strides made in 

 transportation facilities enable 



iiim to sliip an expensive piece of stone 

 with the assurance that it will reach its 

 destination safely. 



According to Henry Bacon, the archi- 

 tect of the Lincoln Memorial, there arc 

 more than eight hundred pieces of stone 

 in the structure. These weigh from 

 twelve to twenty-five tons each. No 

 other piece of architecture in the world 

 can boast of such construction. It 

 reminds one of the giant stones of the 

 pyramids of Egypt. 



Meerschaum as a Building Material 

 in Spain 



EVEN the most aesthetically inclined 

 of our American millionaires would 

 hardly consider the luxury ot living in a 

 residence built of meerschaum as within 

 the range of their fortunes, yet there 

 are many unpretentious houses of this 

 material in the Spanish town of Val- 

 lecas, near Madrid, where a coarse 

 variety of this substance may be 

 found. 



Oddh' enough, just across the 

 Straits are the Moroccans, who have 

 discovered that still another varie- 

 ty of meerschaum lathers freely 

 and makes a good substitute for 

 the ordinary toilet soap. 



Th(j laiycil pieces of marble ever set in any structure in lliis country have been swung into 

 place in the Lincoln Memorial. Each one of these giant slabs weighs twenty-eiglit tons 



