- Indiana Limestone
Period.
History
Native Americans were some of the first people to discover Limestone in Indiana. It was not long before
settlers used this rock around their windows and doors and for memorials around town. The firstquarry was started in 1827, and by 1929Hoosier quarries yielded 340,000 m³ (12 million cubic feet) of usable stone. The expansion of the railroads brought great need for limestone to build bridges and tunnels and Indiana was the place to get it. Americanarchitecture of the late 19th and early 20th century included a lot of limestone detail work on buildings but as architecture styles changed so did the demand of limestone. With theArab Oil Embargo of 1973 the price of alternative building materials skyrocketed so Indiana Limestone remerged as an energy efficient building material. [cite web | url =http://iliai.com/index.php?pageId=44 | title = History of Indiana Limestone| accessdate =2007-07-11]Salem limestone was officially designated as the "state stone" of Indiana by the Indiana General Assembly in 1971. [cite web|url=http://www.statelib.lib.in.us/www/ihb/emblems/embriver.html|title=Indiana State River and Indiana State Stone]
Today
Today Indiana Limestone is part of a high-end market. It is mostly used on the exterior of homes and commercial buildings. With the impact of
acid rain it is not used in monuments as it was in the 19th century.Buildings
Buildings such as the
Empire State Building ,The Pentagon , and theUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum feature Indiana limestone in their exteriors. Indiana limestone was used extensively in rebuilding Chicago after the Chicago Fire. TheNeogothic campus of theUniversity of Chicago is almost entirely constructed out of Bedford Indiana Limestone.The campus of
Washington University in St. Louis , both new construction and its original buildings, makes use of Indiana Limestone (along with Missouri Red Granite) in its collegiate gothic architecture.The majority of Indiana University (Bloomington Campus) was constructed out of limestone. In the 1979 film "
Breaking Away ", the main character's father is a former quarry worker who reminisces with his son about his pride in playing a role in the campus architecture; his son often goes swimming with his friends at one of the quarries.The
New Yankee Stadium inThe Bronx ,New York , scheduled to open in 2009, extensively utilizes Indiana Limestone paneling on its exterior facade.ee also
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List of types of limestone References and footnotes
External links
* [http://igs.indiana.edu/geology/minRes/indianaLimestone/index.cfm Indiana Geological Survey explanation of Indiana Limestone]
* [http://www.iliai.com/ Indiana Limestone Institute of America]
* [http://www.bedfordonline.com/archives/vignettes/limestone/ilcitour010703/index.htm Photos of the now abandoned quarry where the Empire State building stone was taken.]
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