DESCRIPTIVE NOTES OF QUARRY DISTRICTS AND QUARRIES 239 



building from the earliest settlement of the place, and the 

 old stone houses are In part built of this stone. Quarries 

 have been opened from the Kingston and Rondout railroad 

 on Main street, and near Union avenue south-west to the 

 cemetery, and near Washington and Pearl streets In the 

 western part of the city. The beds are from two to eight 

 feet thick. Two well-marked systems of vertical joints 

 divide the rock into blocks of a size convenient for quarry- 

 ing. Freshly fractured surfaces of this limestone are of a 

 dark-blue shade ; weathered surfaces are gray, in some cases 

 brown-yellow. Thin seams of argillaceous or more clayey 

 rock, from one-sixteenth to one-fourth of an inch, alternating 

 Irregularly with the calcareous portions, cause unequal wear 

 in exposed faces and develop lines of dirty yellow in the 

 gray background of the stone, which are unsightly. They 

 do not, however, impair seriously Its strength or durability, 

 except when the stone Is set on edge. Some chert and 

 scattering crystal of pyrlte occur in some of the surface 

 beds, but the lower and thicker beds appear to be free from 

 these minerals. The stone is best adapted for foundations 

 and for heavy masonry as it is hard, dense, very strong 

 and to be had in large blocks. These quarries have fur- 

 nished the great bulk of stone used In Kingston. The piers 

 of the Poughkeepsie bridge, part of the anchorages and 

 piers of the New York and Brooklyn bridge ; locks at Cohoes 

 and Waterford, St. Patrick's Roman Catholic church in 

 Newburgh are examples of the Kingston limestones. These 

 quarries are not worked continuously. 



Greenport, Columbia County — The quarries near Hudson 

 in the town of Greenport are opened on the north end, and 

 in the western escarpment of Becraft's mountain. Geolog- 

 ically they are In the Upper Tentamerus and Encrlcal lime- 

 stone divisions of the Lower Helderberg horizon and the 

 stone is a nearly pure carbonate of lime. It is gray to red- 

 dish-gray In color, sub-crystalline to crystalline and highly 

 fossiliferous. The beds are from four inches to six feet 

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