A Village Carved In Stone

Graniteville, the neighborhood that grew up around Waterford's granite quarries starting in the 19th century, is now not much of a 'ville at all. It's more of, well, a road.

Oh, there are buildings on it, and some of them look old, but if you're thinking of a "historic district" as a recognizable cohesive entity, then Graniteville will disappoint. Honestly it probably won't even reach that level, because to be disappointed you have to be expecting something, and most people who drive down Rope Ferry Road, between the St. Paul in Chains Rectory and the place where that power line cuts through open space, are not.

However, I was. I looked fruitlessly for Graniteville for a long time. But eventually - now I will resort to a cheesy yet necessary metaphor - I found a lot there, but only once I figured out where to dig. Once I knew what I was looking for, and put some effort into uncovering it, it began to fall away in great slabs, revealing a surprising wealth just beneath the surface. In fact, after I’d become accustomed to the search, I found that some of what I wanted had been present on the surface all along, blending in with its surroundings, waiting silently for me to chip it loose.

There was, for example, a red barn. I'd always noticed it, not because I thought it looked historic, but for the rustic heart hung on its side. I'd stopped to take a picture of it years ago, just because it looked so adorably “country,” like a prop for a photo shoot involving kids in overalls and heritage chickens. But the barn is actually a significant part of Graniteville. The style is Gothic Revival, with an eccentric little pointed double window. And the house, also painted red, was the home of Philo Gates, son of Warren Gates, who started the first major quarrying operation in 1832, providing granite first for the Harlem Railroad and then for forts and lighthouses along the East Coast.

There is another house, with an intricately carved fairy-tale porch - a Carpenter Gothic-meets-Italianate porch, it turns out, on a Greek Revival house. This appealing stylistic mash-up was home to stone-cutter Francis Gilbert. Before the process became mechanized, quarry work was relatively egalitarian. Workers could form cooperatives, and some later ran sites of their own. They were also some of Waterford’s first immigrants. They came from Ireland and England and Scotland, but also from Sweden, Finland, and Italy. Those who did not speak English wore an identifying numbered pendant around their necks.

Children attended the two-room schoolhouse, built in 1878. Now it houses a boy scout troop, and it looks distinctive but nothing about it screams “quarrying history” at passers-by. I looked for a while for something more old-schoolhouse-like, until I realized it was this red structure, standing there plain as day, clearly visible from the road. Its front steps are made of granite.

The industry started with “taking off millstones” from the rocky land in 1737, and in time it provided foundations for buildings like New London’s U.S. Customs House as well as quotidian  objects like pavers. Work slowed with the advent of concrete and the 1938 hurricane, and ended with World War II. All of the 31 “contributing  buildings” of the district have an attached person, a nurse or a blacksmith. Some of their names are recorded, some are not. Each is, or was, a small piece of an irrecoverable world.

The houses are not the only relic from the days of the quarries. The Statue of Liberty and Grand Central Terminal, to name just two of many, stand atop bases of Waterford granite. And at the Western edge of the district, invisible from the road, are two old quarries. Supposedly they contain pieces of excavated stone and old equipment wrapped around a tree. I haven’t ventured into the woods to look for them, but someday I will. Which means I just might have to write about Graniteville again.