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Tennessee marble is a type of crystalline limestone found primarily in East Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Long esteemed by architects and builders for its pinkish-gray color and the ease with which it is polished, this stone has been used in the construction of numerous notable buildings and monuments throughout the United States and Canada, including the National Gallery of Art and the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., as well as parts of the United States Capitol in Washington, Grand Central Terminal in New York, and Union Station in Toronto. Tennessee marble achieved such popularity in the late-19th century that Knoxville, the stone's primary finishing and distribution center, became known as "The Marble City."
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While Tennessee marble is not true marble, its crystalline nature lends it a strong resemblance to marble, especially when polished. The stone occurs in belts of Ordovician-period rocks known as the Holston Formation, and is quarried primarily in Knox, Blount, Loudon, Union, and Hawkins counties. While pink is the most well-known Tennessee marble color, the stone also occurs in gray, dark brown ("cedar"), and variegated shades.
The use of Tennessee marble declined after World War II, when cheaper building materials became widely available. There are currently only six active Tennessee marble quarries, all operated by the Tennessee Marble Company. The stone has most recently been used in the floor of the United States Capitol Visitor Center, and for the 170-ton "First Amendment" tablet that adorns the facade of Washington's Newseum.
Occurrence
Tennessee marble is found in the Appalachian Ridge-and-Valley Province, a series of alternating elongate ridges and valleys that lie between the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Cumberland Plateau. The Holston Formation, in which Tennessee marble is found, occurs in a series of belts that follow the natural folds and faults of the Ridges-and-Valleys. While these belts can be up to 75 miles (121 km) long, they are rarely more than a few miles wide. In 1911, the Tennessee State Geological Survey identified six primary Holston Formation belts containing Tennessee marble: the Luttrell, Black Oak, Concord, Knoxville, Bays Mountain, and French Broad belts. A seventh belt, the Galbraith in Hawkins County, is considered an extension of the Black Oak.
The Luttrell belt, the westernmost of the Holston Formation belts, stretches along Copper Ridge from Beaver Creek in Fountain City northeast to Galbraith Springs (about 10 miles (16 km) west of Rogersville) in Hawkins County. The Black Oak belt stretches along Black Oak Ridge from Monroe County to the Corryton area in north Knox County. The Concord belt, one of the most heavily quarried, stretches from Sweetwater through Knox County to Strawberry Plains. The Knoxville belt, also heavily quarried, stretches from southeast of Sweetwater to Ruggles Ferry (east of Knoxville) in Knox. The Bays Mountain belt is found along the southwestern end of Bays Mountain in south Knox County, and stretches into northern Blount County. The French Broad belt is a u-shaped belt found at the confluence of the French Broad and Holston rivers ("Forks-of-the-River").
Lithology
While true marble is metamorphic, Tennessee marble is sedimentary, and is therefore classified as limestone. Tennessee marble was formed from the accumulation of bryozoan and other primordial marine lifeforms 460 million years ago, during the Ordovician period. Even when polished, Tennessee marble retains a fossiliferous texture, with bryozoan and crinoid fossils being among the most commonly found. A noticeable feature of Tennessee marble is the presence of jagged horizontal gray or black lines, or "stylolites." Known as "crowfeet" by quarrymen, these form from residual insoluble materials left over from the natural limestone dissolution processes.
The most well-known shades of Tennessee marble are pink, gray, and cedar, but it also is found in blue, yellow, and cream shades. Along with its aesthetic colors, builders preferred the stone for its durability, the ease with which it is polished, and the fact that the stone is virtually impervious to stains. Tennessee marble is also easily converted into lime, and mid-20th century lime companies occasionally erected kilns near defunct quarries for this purpose.
History
As early as the late 18th century, Tennessee marble was being harvested for construction purposes, most notably for the Ramsey House on the outskirts of Knoxville and the "Old Stone House" near modern Friendsville. Visitors to East Tennessee were reporting the existence of marble beds in the region as early as the 1810s, and state geologist Gerard Troost provided an extensive description of Tennessee marble deposits in an 1831 report to the Tennessee General Assembly. The Rogersville Marble Company, founded in 1838, produced monuments and furniture from Tennessee marble extracted from a quarry in Hawkins County. Marble Hall, a house built by the company's director, Orville Rice, contained numerous Tennessee marble interior elements, and acted as a showplace for the company.
In 1850, Governor William Trousdale chose the Rogersville Marble Company's marble as the state's representative stone for the construction of the Washington Monument. During this same period, marble from Hawkins County, either from Rice's quarry or a rival quarry south of Rogersville, was used in U.S. Capitol extension projects (William Dougherty, the construction superintendent for the Washington Monument, was instrumental in obtaining the marble). Transporting the quarried blocks out of the region presented a major challenge for these early companies. Mule teams, often led by local African American entrepreneurs, carried the blocks to the Holston River, where they were loaded onto flatboats and transported downstream.
By the early 1850s, at least two marble quarries were in operation in Knox County, one of which supplied marble for parts of the Tennessee State Capitol. The arrival of railroads in the region, namely the predecessor lines of the East Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia Railway, provided a major boost for the industry, and helped Knox County overtake Hawkins as the region's primary quarrying and production center. The industry was also aided by an infusion of northern capital in the years following the Civil War.
In 1873, federal architect Alfred B. Mullett used Tennessee marble for Knoxville's Post Office and Customs House, sparking a nationwide curiosity in the stone. Mullett acquired the marble from a quarry at Forks-of-the-River, where the Holston and French Broad rivers join to form the Tennessee River east of Knoxville. After the building's completion, businessman George Ross and several associates organized the Knoxville Marble Company to assume control of this quarry, and provided marble for the construction of the Mullett-designed Customs House in St. Louis during the mid-1870s. Following Ross's death, his son, John M. Ross, became president of the company.
By 1882, eleven Tennessee marble quarries were in operation in Knox County alone. This number had doubled within a decade, as the rising popularity of Neoclassical architecture brought about a rapid increase in demand for marble. Knoxville, the industry's chief financial and production center, became known as "The Marble City" during this period and even included a marble mining derrick on the Knoxville flag. The community of Concord, located west of Knoxville, became a key marble transloading center, where blocks were transferred from boats to rail cars for transport out of the region. By 1885, Concord was home to ten marble-related companies.
Ross eventually sold the Forks-of-the-River quarry to the Baltimore-based W.H. Evans Company, which had opened a large marble finishing mill in Knoxville. Ross then purchased a quarry in the Island Home area of South Knoxville. In 1898, he sold this quarry (later known as the "Mead Quarry") to the Republic Marble Company, which had been operating quarries near Concord and Luttrell throughout the previous decade. Republic had been founded by Knoxville Iron Company executive William S. Mead (1833–1908), and at the time was managed by his son, Frank S. Mead (1864–1936). Though Republic purchased Ross's business interests and was subsequently known as "Ross-Republic," John M. Ross continued operating independently, opening a quarry (the "Ross Quarry") on land adjacent to the Mead Quarry. The Ross Quarry supplied marble for the J.P. Morgan Library in New York in the early 1900s.
Knoxville banker John J. Craig (1820–1892) began buying up quarry properties in the 1870s, and had established his own marble company, John J. Craig and Company, in 1878. Following his death, his son, John J. Craig, Jr. (1860–1904), took control of the company, and helped establish the Tennessee Producers Marble Company, which operated a finishing mill that serviced quarries in Knox, Blount, and Hawkins counties. John J. Craig III (1885–1944), who became president of the company after his father's death, established a large finishing mill, the Candoro Marble Works, in South Knoxville in 1914. James B. Jones, a former Craig company employee, established the Gray-Knox Marble Company, which would build a large mill on Sutherland Avenue in Knoxville.
By 1908, Tennessee ranked third in the nation in marble production, behind only Vermont and Georgia. While eighty percent of marble quarried in the state was used in furniture and interior decoration, it was best known as a monumental building material. Monuments and buildings constructed of Tennessee marble during the early 20th century include the St. Paul Public Library in Minnesota, the Richard C. Lee U.S. Courthouse in New Haven, Connecticut, and the Firemen's Memorial in Manhattan.
The rise of modern architecture and a preference for the use of concrete, coupled with the onset of the Great Depression, led to a decline in the Tennessee marble industry by the end of the 1920s. The stone experienced a brief resurgence in the 1930s as New Deal federal construction projects encouraged the use of locally quarried building materials. Buildings completed during this period include the National Gallery of Art (West Building), the Knoxville Post Office, and the Tennessee Supreme Court Building in Nashville.
By the 1950s, only five Tennessee marble companies remained in operation. Some companies had turned to secondary products such as lime, which was often produced in kilns located near the quarries. The rise in foreign competition and changes in demand for building materials led to further decline, and most Tennessee marble companies had closed by the mid-1980s. The stone was still produced on a smaller scale, however. It was used in the Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed Knoxville Museum of Art, completed in 1990, and the BarberMcMurry-designed Gay Street addition of Knoxville's East Tennessee History Center, completed in 2005. The Tennessee Marble Company, founded in 1993, is currently the only major producer of Tennessee marble. The company was operating six quarries as of 2007.
Notable Tennessee marble producers
Tennessee marble in art
Sculptor Jack Rich described Tennessee marble as an "excellent sculptural stone," though difficult to work with due to its hardness. Two of the best known Tennessee marble sculptures, E.C. Potter's lions, "Patience" and "Fortitude," stand outside the entrance of the New York Public Library Main Branch. The Piccirilli Brothers also worked with the stone, most notably creating the entrance tripods at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, and several statues at the base of the USS Maine National Monument in New York. The Italian-born sculptor Albert Milani (1892–1977), who worked at the Candoro Marble Works in Knoxville, created numerous works using Tennessee marble, including the four eagles atop the Knoxville Post Office and the "History of the World" relief at the Pennsylvania State Capitol. Other notable Tennessee marble works include Frances Rich's nurses' memorial ("Spirit of Nursing") at Arlington National Cemetery; Bruno Louis Zimm's Slocum Memorial Fountain in New York's Tompkins Square Park; Joseph Emile Renier's Pomona at Brookgreen Gardens in South Carolina; and Cliff Fragua's statue of the Pueblo leader Po'pay in the National Statuary Hall.
One of the best-known paintings by Knoxville artist Lloyd Branson, Hauling Marble, was inspired by the Tennessee marble industry.