Rosetown Review: The New England Brown Stone Quarry
by Richard Franklin Donohue
Town Historian
Feldspathic Arenite Triassic-Jurassic Brown Sandstone, or simply brownstone, has been a treasured building material for the people of this region for centuries. Relatively easy to harvest and work, local brownstone is both strong enough for sturdy buildings and soft enough for their nuanced decorations.
In 1665, Middletown’s earliest settlers took special notice of several large slabs of brownstone protruding over the eastern bank of the river in what is now Portland. Quickly exhausting the “easily obtained … loose fragments” for use in their homes and graveyards, inhabitants began to “dig or raise stone at ‘ye rocks’ as the spot had come to be called.
In time, resourceful residents, and then the populace at large, discovered that the outcropping on the east bank of the river was merely a tiny detachment of what lay beneath their feet. By 1726 Middletown residents were compelled to pass legislation restricting the cutting of brownstone to their own people, creating jurisdiction over the “rocks and quarries on the east and west sides of ye Great River.”
Public quarrying began in the Middletown Upper Houses as early as 1671 “on the Town Commons”
between Main Street and Ranney Road, a site that 18th Century land records refer to as “a place called the quarries.” In the 1780s, “an excellent quarry of Stone, much used and approved” was in operation off today’s South Street.
Forty years later, private quarries started opening near the public site off Ranney Road with the most successful, the Washington Quarry, being located on the south side of Timber Hill Road. As the century progressed and the popularity of brownstone as a building material exploded, several small firms sprang up in the Upper Houses.
In the 1850s, most of these small-scale operations combined to form a company which would ultimately become the Connecticut Brownstone Co. located at the site of today’s Pierson Park.
Following the establishment of the Cromwell-Meriden Railroad that connected the city of Meriden with the Connecticut River at Cromwell, a group of Meriden businessmen led by Horace C. Wilcox became interested in a potential quarry site near the intersection of Main and Wall streets. The site had been discovered and explored in the 1850s when the landowner was attempting to dig for a well but kept running into a massive slab of brownstone.
With its out-of-the-way location and proximity to the river and both the Meriden and the Connecticut Valley rail lines, the investors believed the enterprise to be an excellent prospect.
On April 9, 1886, men hired by the Meriden syndicate excavated the site and “struck a large ledge of rock … superior in quality to that found in Portland.” Within days, the investors formed the New England Brown Stone Co. with a capital stock of $250,000, approximately $8.7 million in 2026 numbers.
With the exception of one Cromwell man, Linus Williams, the board of directors was entirely comprised of wealthy Meriden businessmen. The company purchased a 50-acre plot of land running from Main Street to the river and hired workmen to begin clearing the soil away from the stone in July.
By September, more than 20,000 cubic yards of dirt 20 feet deep had been removed and used to build a road through the low marshland between the quarry and the river. In October, Frederick DePuyster, former superintendent of the Cromwell/Meriden Railroad, who had been superintending the building of a railroad in West Virginia, was hired to manage the new quarry.
Finally, on Nov. 13, the first pieces of brownstone were cut from the New England Brown Stone Co. quarry and shipped to builders in Boston. With their initial success, the directors purchased the very latest “engines, derricks and other machinery … just as fast as it could be used to advantage.”
During the spring and summer more than 100 men, mostly Swedish immigrants, worked to uncover more stone, form an embankment at the river with the soil, and then build tracks connecting to the Valley Railroad line. In June the company began work on a large dock at the river directly east of the quarry.
Hailed as “one of the finest on the river,” the 128-foot dock would stand 12 feet above the low tide and connect to the quarry with a dedicated track.
Throughout the summer of 1887, large quantities of stone were cut and sold to firms in Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania “at prices the same as those obtained by the Portland companies.” In the fall, the Meriden Britannia Co. hosted an exhibition featuring several samples of the Cromwell stone with its “splendid quality and grain.” The company itself boasted that its product was “claimed by experts to be equal, if not superior to that taken out across the river.”
At least part of the excellent quality of the New England Brown Stone Co.’s product was attributed to the state-of-the-art machinery that the company employed. The stone was hewn by a small, steam-powered machine resembling a “dummy locomotive” on a 20-foot track that was placed on the rock to be cut. The machine was then propelled back and forth on the track while a “knife” consisting of a set of chisel drill bits was driven into the stone with a rapid chopping motion that dug “into the solid substance as readily as a tiger’s tooth pricks a bit of raw beef.”
Every few swipes, the blade was lengthened and the process repeated until a 200-ton block was cut from the ledge and further cut into 20,000-pound cubes in a similar fashion. The process left the cut stone “remarkably free from blemishes and flaws” and “needing far less preparation from consumers than did the old blocks chipped out by wedges and drills.”
A key factor in the company’s competitive pricing was the ease with which they were able to transport their stone to any area of the country. Once cut, the stone was lifted by immense steam-powered derricks and placed directly onto flat train cars at the edge of the quarry wall.
A small locomotive then drove the stone to the wharf at the river where it was loaded onto the decks of schooners bound for New York. If the stone was to be delivered by rail, the cars were connected to trains on either the Valley Line or the Cromwell-Meriden line, both of which were within 50 yards of the quarry.
To advertise this superior product, the company contracted with a Middletown stone mason to sculpt 150 miniature houses out of brownstone that were shipped to building firms throughout the country. In February of 1889, the company (and specifically Superintendent DePuyster) earned national fame when the Meriden Journal published a story about the discovery of the 90-foot fossil of a “Cellus Gigantus” tree, believed to have gone extinct several hundred years B.C.
The “sell” was quickly debunked but not before the story was syndicated to newspapers throughout the country, leading to “crowds of curious people daily flock[ing] to the quarry” and countless letters from interested scientists.
While this specific story was printed in jest, “numerous petrified objects” were in fact discovered in the stone over the years including “fish of peculiar formation” and the outline of a complete tree with its trunk and all of its branches perfectly preserved.
Accidents were “unfortunately not of infrequent occurrence” in the quarry, especially during the busy season. On a nearly monthly basis, news stories told of broken bones, head injuries and mechanical accidents resulting in loss of limbs and sometimes life. In the winter months, unstable frozen earth would suddenly give way, killing those who did not move quickly enough.
Men would have their hips crushed between moving stones or all too often fall from the makeshift rigging or walls of the quarry. Heavy, fast-moving rail carts frequently flew off their tracks, one such instantly killing a nearby workman. By March of 1891, the quarrymen had had enough and decided to form an Accident Insurance Society.
Each member paid monthly dues that formed a fund to support them in the event of an accident “in the quarry that deprives him of the fruits of his labor.” Many of the quarrymen and certainly the majority of those reported with work injuries hailed from the Swedish population of Cromwell, most of whose families had immigrated to work in A.N. Pierson’s greenhouses throughout the previous decade.
The New England Brown Stone Co. continued operations at the Cromwell quarry with great success until just after the turn of the 20th century when brownstone fell out of favor as a building material. In 1906, the company filed for bankruptcy and Capt. Wilbur F. Ranney was authorized to “sell the whole or any part of the company.”
During the quarry’s 20-year run, thousands of tons of Cromwell brownstone were used to construct buildings in cities all over the United States and Canada as well as throughout Connecticut. Left on its own, the quarry filled with water and became a popular swimming and fishing area until the flood of 1936 contaminated the water.
During a town meeting in October of 1887, the New England Brown Stone Co. was granted permission to build a small railroad track connecting its quarry to the Meriden & Cromwell line. After some discussion, one official commented that “it is unquestionably to the interest of the town to encourage all legitimate enterprises within its limits and especially one that furnishes employment to as many of its citizens. The privilege asked will add somewhat to the taxable property of the town without detracting from it in the slightest.”
In true 19th Century fashion, the official gave no voice, and possibly little thought, to exactly how long these benefits would last or what would remain when the Meriden enterprise was done selling Cromwell’s resources to so many outside of town’s limits. Today, communities like Cromwell accommodate such investors with space, rather than brownstone, only to find themselves with empty buildings 20 years later.
The smallest patches of open land are developed with trending commercial interests, each once again adding “somewhat” to the taxable property of the town but not much to the long-term character of this place we call home.
Financial stability is indeed essential, as is the work associated with ensuring our future, but just as we look to the past to discover our current identity and sense of place, so must we be aware of the lessons that it holds for us today. CL