204 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



Essex county shore. The beds contain from 16 to 18 feet of work- 

 able limestone, well adapted for building material, mostly of a gray 

 or bluish gray color. Examples of the architectural use of the 

 limestone are to be seen in the Reformed Church on Swan street, 

 Albany, the eastern foundations and subbasement of the State 

 Capitol, in the Brooklyn Bridge piers and other structures. The 

 black layers were employed for ornamental work. A polished 

 specimen in the collections of the State Museum shows that the 

 stone is somewhat coarser than the Glens Falls material, with visible 

 particles of crystalline calcite, but the color is rather a bluish black 

 than a dense jet black. The quarries have not been worked in 

 recent years. 



PLATTSBURG 



Quarries at Bluff Point, south of Plattsburg, supply an excellent 

 " shell " marble which is found in the Chazy formation. The stone 

 consists of fossil fragments, mostly rounded red and pink particles 

 which have been derived from crinoid stems, with dark fragments 

 of brachiopods in less abundance. The red particles measure from 

 2 to 5 mm in diameter. The fossils are inclosed in a gray groundmass 

 that shows many glistening calcite cleavages, the texture being partly 

 crystalline, thus approaching that of a true marble. As a conse- 

 quence of this texture the stone takes a good polish, and the vari- 

 colored fossils lend an ornamental effect which is quite attractive. 

 It has been sold as " Lepanto " marble, mainly for use in interior 

 decoration. The quarries are now worked by the Vermont Marble 

 Co. and the product is shipped to that company's works for cutting 

 and polishing. In character the stone is a high-grade calcium lime- 

 stone, containing 95 or 96 per cent calcium carbonate, about 3 per 

 cent magnesium carbonate and 1 per cent or a little more of silica, 

 alumina and iron oxides. The specific gravity is 2.71 and the 

 weight 169 pounds to the cubic foot. Smock states that it absorbs 

 0.145 P er cen t °f water. 



CATSKILL AND HUDSON 



The Becraft limestone in the Hudson valley contains beds of 

 highly fossiliferous character, with a subcrystalline texture, that 

 have been quarried to some extent for decorative material. The 

 stone is gray in color, with round and crescentic fragments of crin- 

 oids replaced by white calcite. The quarries near the Hudson are 

 now producing material for Portland cement, but the George 

 Holdridge quarries at Catskill are worked for building and orna- 



