326 BULLETIN OF THE NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



sandstone. The granite is pink in color, and the blocks 

 are laid up in courses with rock-face fronts. The same 

 combination of granite and sandstone is seen in the new 

 Commercial Bank building, on State street near Broadway, 

 and in the Young Men's Christian Association building, on 

 North Pearl street. The United States Government build- 

 ing, at the foot of State street, is built of gray granite from 

 Maine. That of the upper stories is said to be from the 

 St. George quarries in Knox county. The stone in the 

 lower story is coarse-grained, and is from Spruce Head 

 Island, Maine. The Albany City bank building front, on 

 State street, is from the same quarries. The Stanwix 

 Hall hotel front, on Broadway, represents the Ouincy 

 granite quarries. 



For interior, decorative work there are some fine exam- 

 ples in the capitol. The massive columns of polished red 

 granite in the Assembly chamber are from Grindstone Is- 

 land, Jefferson county ; those of the Senate chamber are 

 from Stony Creek, Connecticut ; the pink granites in the 

 columns of the library are from Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. 



Marble has not been used to any considerable extent for 

 exterior walls. 1 he most prominent example is the state 

 hall, built in 1835-42, of a dolomitic stone from Sing Sing. 

 The stone is coarse-granular and friable. In the outer 

 walls it is every where weathered to a bluish-gray color, and 

 the surfaces are roughened by the decomposition and dis- 

 integration. Stones in the cornice, the sills, lintels and 

 steps, where they are more exposed to the action of rain- 

 water and to frosts, are, in some cases, much disintegrated, 

 so as to be a mass of loosely coherent grains, and they are 

 falling to pieces. The unsafe condition of the west front 

 cornice, three years ago, necessitated its removal and the 

 substitution of metal in its place. It appears probable, 

 from a remark of Prof. William Mather,"^' that the stone was 

 not well selected. 



* William W. Mather, Geology of the First District, Albany, 1843, p. 455. 



