1841.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



265 



ON THE BUILDING MATERIALS OF THE UNITED STATES 



OF NORTH AMERICA. 



By David Stevenson, Civil Engineer, Edinburgh. 



Read before the Society of Arts for Scotland in Stssion 1841. 



There is, perhaps, nothing connected with the useful arts, which 

 has a greater share in forming the characteristic appearance of a 

 country, than the materials which it produces, and of which its public 

 works are necessarily constructed. I use the word materials in the 

 technical sense in which it is employed by engineers and architects, 

 to denote the several productions of the mineral and vegetable king- 

 doms which are used in the construction of engineering and archi- 

 tectural works ; and we have only to look around us for a moment, to 

 be at once convinced how much these, in their almost endless variety, 

 affect the appearance, as well as modify the structure, of the public 

 works of every-country. 



A good illustration of the truth of this observation presents itself, 

 when we compare the circumstances of Scotland and England in this 

 respect; the former being what may be termed a stone, and the latter 

 a lirick country. To what circumstance can the far-famed beauty of 

 the Scottish metropolis be more reasonably attributed, than to the 

 great abundance of beautiful sandstone afforded by the quarries in its 

 immediate vicinity, to which its street architecture and public build- 

 ings are so greatly indebted for their striking appearance. This 

 remark applies, as we are well aware, not only to Ediiiburgli, but to 

 many other towns in Scotland ; while our less highly-favoured neigh- 

 bours in the south, from the scarcity of good coloured building stone 

 in some districts, and the total want of it in others, are reduced to the 

 necessity of using brick for their dwelling-houses, and in many in- 

 stances for their public buildings. So generally acknowledged are the 

 fine qualities of the stone from many of the Scotch quarries, that it is 

 exported to a considerable extent. To London itself, indeed, a large 

 quantity of stone is annually sent from Craigleilh in Mid-Lothian, 

 which is the largest, and probably the finest sandstone quarry in the 

 world, and of which the dwelling-houses in the New Town of Edin- 

 burgh, and most of the public buildings, were in a great measure built. 



Many similar illustrations maybe found, even in matters of much 

 smaller importance than that to which I have just alluded. In Great 

 Britain, for example, with the exception of some districts in England, 

 the roofs of houses are very generally covered with slates, the greater 

 part of which are supplied by the extensive slate quarries of Bangor 

 in North Wales, and Easdale, Balachulish, and others, on the west 

 coast of Scotland. But Holland has not the advantage of a like sup- 

 ply, and consequently the houses in that country are invariably 

 covered with tiles ; and if we extend our observations still further, to 

 Canada and the United States, we there find that the want of more 

 suitable materials for roofing, and the great quantities of fine timber 

 with which those countries abound, have induced the inhabitants to 

 cover their dwelling-houses with wood cut into thin pieces called 

 " shingles," while the spires of the churches, which rise from all the 

 principal towns on the banks of the St. Lawrence, are covered with 

 highly polished tin. 



Another of the many illustrations that may be given, appears in the 

 construction of roads — a most important branch of engineering. The 

 roads in this country are now invariably macadamized, as materials 

 hard enough for forming them advantageously on that principle are 

 very generally met with throughout the length and breadth of the 

 island. In France, on the other hand, the want of hard materials 

 renders Macadamizing not so applicable ; and consequently, it has not 

 by any means been generally introduced in that country, many of the 

 principal roads being still pitched or paved with large stones. In Hol- 

 land, owing to the scarcity of stones of every description, most of the 

 roads are paved with small well-burned bricks, called "clinkers," 

 which are set in sand, and present an exceedingly smooth surface ; 

 while in America and Russia, we find long stretches of "corduroy 

 road," constructed entirely of timber — the produce of their extensive 

 forests, which forms a species of highway by no means so well calcu- 

 lated as any of the others alluded to, for extending communication or 

 promoting the comfort of the traveller ; as the painful experience of 

 every one who has travelled en them can abundantly testify. 



The materials of every country may therefore be regarded as a 

 subject of great interest connected with its history, and this conside- 

 ration has induced me to offer a few remarks on the materials em- 

 ployed in the construction of the public works of the United States, in 

 the belief that they may not be uninteresting to the members of a 

 society which has for its object the promotion of the useful arts. 



Ikon is pretty abundant in North America, and it is worked in 

 several parts of the United States. The only iron-works which I had 



an opportunity of visiting in the course of a late tour in that country, 

 were those in the neighbourhood of Pittsburg, on the river Ohio, 

 which are said to be the most extensive in America. At this place, 

 the workmen were engaged in the manufacture of pig iron and plate- 

 rails for railroads. The use of plate-rails, however, has been very 

 limited, and as no other description of rail has been manufactured in 

 the country, it has been the practice to import both the rails and chairs 

 for the greater part of the American railroads from Britain, as well as 

 the iron used for some other purposes. The government of the 

 United States, indeed, in order to facilitate the progress of railways, 

 do not exact the duty on iron rails and chairs imported from this 

 country. It may safely be said, that the manufacture of iron in the 

 United States, and what is more closely connected with the subject of 

 this paper, its application to engineering works, are still in their in- 

 fancy, at least when we regard the great extent and perfection to 

 which these arts have been brought in Britain ; and my observations 

 on the materials of the country will therefore be confined to those of 

 masonry and carpentry, as these are in some degree peculiar to the 

 country, and any remarks regarding them will of course be more 

 interesting. 



Brick is the building material which is now invariably used in the 

 construction of dwelling-houses in the towns of the United States. 

 Timber is still pretty generally used for houses in the country ; but of 

 late years the erection of wooden structures, from their liability to 

 take fire, has been prohibited in the neighbourhood of towns. Clay 

 suitable for brick-making is found in great quantities, which is a for- 

 tunate circumstance for the inhabitants ; and the bricks, which are 

 burned with wood, and manufactured in other respects like those in 

 this country, generally cost about (J4 dollars or 2Gs. a thousand. 



Experience in our own and in many other countries, has proved that 

 brick is well suited for house-building ; but experience has also shown 

 that it is by no means so well adapted as stone for engineering ope- 

 rations generally ; and to some works it is with us considered wholly 

 inapplicable. Marble and granite, of which I shall afterwards have 

 occasion more particularly to speak, occur in the northern parts of the 

 United States ; but stone easily accessible to the quarrier, and fitted 

 for building purposes, is very rarely to be met with, and the American 

 engineers have therefore been obliged, as is the case in all countries, 

 to adapt the structure of the works to the materials they possess ; and. 

 in making this adaptation, they appear to have violated many of the 

 established rules of engineering as practised in this country. The 

 scarcity of stone, and the unsuitableness of brick for hydraulic pur- 

 poses, for example, has forced them to construct most of the locks and 

 aqueducts on the lines of their great canals wholly of timber, with 

 which the country abounds ; and that material, ill adapted as it may 

 seem to such a purpose and situation, where it is not only exposed to 

 the constant tear and wear occasioned by the lockage of vessels, but 

 also to the destructive effects of alternate immersion in water and 

 exposure to the atmosphere, has nevertheless been found in practice 

 to form a very good substitute for the more durable materials used 

 for such works in Europe. 



Stone. — The quarries of the United States, taking into considera- 

 tion the great extent of the country and the number of its public 

 works, are, as I have already hinted, few in number; and, generally 

 speaking, the workings are on a small scale. They afford granite and 

 marble, and their produce is almost exclusively applied to facing pub- 

 lic buildings, forming stairs, window and door lintels, and to other 

 architectural purposes. 



Granite is worked in the northern part of the comitry at Quineey in 

 the state of Massachusetts, and at Singsing in the state of New York, 

 and also in New Hampshire. The Quineey granite is of a fine gray 

 colour, and can be quarried in large blocks. It has been used a good 

 deal in Boston and the neighbouring country for architectural works. 

 It has also been employed for railway blocks on some of the lines of 

 railway in the neighbourhood of Boston, and in the construction of the 

 only two graving docks which exist in the United States, the one at 

 Boston, and the other at Norfolk in Virginia, the latter at a distance 

 of upwards of 500 miles from the quarries ; and these, so far as I am 

 aware, are the only engineering works of any consequence in America 

 in which granite has been employed. 



The Singsing granite, which is of a dark gray or bluish colour, is 

 quarried on the banks of the Hudson, about "25 miles from the town 

 of New York, at which place it has been pretty generally used for 

 some time for stairs and lintels, and has lately been introduced for 

 facing buildings. The Astor hotel, the largest in America, and per- 

 haps in the world, which is one of the very few stone buildings in 

 New York, is built of this granite. 



In the neighbourhood of Boston, and also Philadelphia, a species of 

 soap-stone is found, which is quarried to some extent, and used in 

 situations exposed to high temperatures instead of fire-brick. 



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