852 
NEW-rORK MARBLE. 
chimney-pieces of this marble in the Capitol at 
Washington, which cost about $500 each. When 
formed into slabs for tables, it costs from $4 to $5 
per square foot. 
New- York abounds invaluable marbles, especial- 
ly Dutchess and Columbia counties. Limestone 
abounds throughout the extent of both these coun- 
ties ; it is granular and compact, white, gray, cloud- 
ed, striped, and nearly black. Marble is extensive- 
ly wrought in Dover, from whence about 40,000 feet 
of marble slabs are sent annually, which yield an 
income of 30,000 dollars. The marble employed 
in building the New- York Custom House is from 
White Plains, Westchester county. It is a very 
white, coarse-grained marble ; its durability remains 
to be tested. Marble is also obtained from Kings- 
bridge and Singsing, but of an inferior quality. 
The University of the City of New- York, as well 
as the State Prison buildings at Singsing, were 
built with the latter, but it has every appearance of 
being rapidly decomposed by the chemical and me- 
chanical agents to which it is exposed. 
The Potomac marble is obtained on the banks of 
the Potomac River, about fifty miles above the City 
of Washington. It is what is called a breccia marble, 
consisting of fragments, varying in size from that 
of a grain of sand to half a foot in diameter ; and 
their forms being angular, rhombic, rounded, oval, 
&c., and of various colours, as white, gray, yellow, 
reddish brown, blackish, &c., present a very beau- 
tiful appearance when polished. The shafts of the 
columns in the Representatives' Chamber, in the 
Capitol of the United States, are formed of this 
marble ; they are nineteen feet nine inches in height 
from the base to the capital, and two feet in diame- 
ter ; some of them being composed of one entire 
mass. Indeed, a block seventy feet long, with a 
base eleven feet by seven, has been obtained at the 
quarry. Our limits allow no farther description of 
