Beginning with a series of small marble quarries popping up along the marble belt of western Vermont in the early 19th century before being consolidated into one singular company, the Vermont Marble Company was for a time the largest marble manufacturing company in the world as well as one of the world's largest companies with over 5000 employees and many quarries across several states.
The story of the company is a complex one; illustrating portions of narratives in the United States regarding land use, business at the turn of the century, labor rights, and building construction. Though there are some active stone quarries in Vermont today, little is left of what was once this company especially in the Rutland region, though its location contributed greatly to the development of the existing communities of Proctor, Rutland, and West Rutland.
The Vermont Marble Co. published a series of brief pamphlets explaining the process of quarrying marble from beginning to end. While much of the information is repeated with each edition, some information changes over the years as the process and uses of marble changed from the early to mid 20th century.
Click on the images below to see each interactive pamphlet published on Internet Archive.
Click here to see some of the structures and monuments in which Vermont stone was used in the United States and beyond; including those made from marble.
References
“Our History.” n.d. Vermont Marble Museum. https://vermontmarblemuseum.org/history-of-vermont-marble/.
Miglorie, Catherine. Vermont’s Marble Industry. Arcadia Publishing, 2013.
Skerrett, Robert G. “Vermont’s Varied Marbles: Origin of These Age-Old Deposits and the Splendid Industry that has Developed in Exploiting Them” in Compressed Air Magazine, v. 31, 1926, Proctoriana Collection. Vermont Historical Society Leahy Library, Barre, VT.
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