Woodbury Granite Company

The Woodbury Granite Company (WGC) was a producer of rough and finished granite products. Incorporated in 1887, purchased and significantly reorganized in 1896, and expanded by merger in 1902 and thereafter, the company operated quarries principally in Woodbury, Vermont, but its headquarters and stone-finishing facilities were located in nearby Hardwick. Beginning as a quarrier and seller of rough stone, the company expanded into the business of finishing cut stone and grew from there. It made its name as a supplier of architectural (structural) granite, and grew to become the United States' largest producer, supplying the stone for many notable buildings, including several state capitols, numerous post offices, and many office buildings.

With the growing national economy and civic and community pride spurring the construction of many granite public buildings, the company flourished in the years around 1910. Changes in architectural styles and in building techniques during the following years greatly harmed the market for architectural granite, and the company's coarser-grained stone could not compete with competitors' finer-grained granite for carving monuments and gravestones, nor could the company compete with the established actors in that market. The company went into decline, which was exacerbated by the Great Depression, and ceased operations in 1935.

Background

The Green Mountains of Vermont have long been known for the quantity and quality of their granite, marble, and slate,Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing, The Vermont Stone Trail: A Visitor's Guide to Granite, Marble and Slate in the Green Mountain State, Montpelier, Vt., 2016.T. Nelson Dale, The Granites of Vermont, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 404, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1909.See generally Ryder N.B. Musselman, Geochemistry and Petrography of Granitic Bodies in Hardwick and Woodbury, Vermont, Thesis, Middlebury College, 2008. but Vermont's remoteness, transportation problems, and difficulties in carving the hard stone (in the case of granite), largely prevented the development of a cut stone industry.John S. Kendall, "The Hardwick & Woodbury Railroad", The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, No. 68 (November, 1946), pp. 50-56; The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. In the early 19th century, Vermont granite was used locally for building.Amanda Pittsley, "The Rich History of Woodbury Gray Granite", Swenson Granite Company, Oct. 14, 2019. Originally, granite was collected from exposed outcrops and "boulder quarries"; only later did it become necessary to cut stone from the ground.George F. Bickford, "Remembering the Granite Quarries in Woodbury", Hardwick Gazette, September 30, 1980, p. 6. The early granite industry in New England was dominated by coastal companies, which were able to ship their products by water. This situation lasted until the middle of the 19th century, when some marble quarries were opened in the Hardwick area. The increasing affluence of the United States in the 1880s and 1890s created a market for marble and granite that sparked the development of the industry in northern Vermont.Elizabeth H. Dow, "Hardwick on the Map, 1895-1915: Industrialization in Direct Democracy", Vermont History: Proceedings of the Vermont Historical Society, Vol. 58, No. 4, pp. 221-249 (Fall 1990). The first "granite shed" (stone trimming and finishing facility) was completed in Hardwick in 1870.Hardwick Historical Society, "About Hardwick "; accessed 2021-09-25. Granite quarries were opened on Robeson Mountain (Vermont's largest deposit of building granite,Federal Writers Project, Vermont; a guide to the Green Mountain state, Vermont State Planning Board, 1937, p. 233. with a deposit measuring some 2 × 4 miles (4 × 7.2 km)Paul Wood, "The Woodbury Granite Co., Part I", The Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., Vol. 74, Iss. 2, (Jun 2021):47-68.) in nearby Woodbury in the 1870s, but transportation limitations prevented much development of the industry.John Barnhill, "Rail to the granite mountain", TrainBoard, Feb 9, 2008; accessed 2021-11-08.

The construction of the Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad (later the St. Johnsbury and Lake Champlain Railroad) to Hardwick in 1872 made it possible to ship granite in quantity from northern Vermont to the outside world, opening new markets.Marvin R. Kendall and Donald B. Valentine, Jr., "Rough Granite, Tough Shays: The History of the Hardwick & Woodbury R.R.", The New England States Limited, Vol. 1, No. 3, Winter 1977-78, New England Rail Service. The railroad later built a short spur, the Hardwick Branch, from Granite Junction (near the northwestern edge of Hardwick village) south through the stonecutting district along Cooper Brook, toward Woodbury. Hardwick became a granite-cutting center, although much of the granite finished there was actually from elsewhere, such as Woodbury, the town some six miles (10 km) to the south.

Largely inspired by the World's Columbian Exposition (and especially its "White City") in 1893, granite became a popular building material for commercial and government buildings and other structures. In the era of the robber barons, the Beaux Arts style imparted to public buildings a sense of grandeur that invited proud governments and wealthy patrons to demonstrate their wealth and public benevolence in a way rarely seen before.Paul Heller, ‘'History Space: Hardwick granite built a nation", Burlington Free Press, April 7, 2018. While the finer-grained granite of Barre was preferred for monuments and gravestones, the coarser-grained Woodbury stone found a market in "architectural" uses such as buildings and paving, for which the Barre stone was too expensive. In addition, the northern stone had greater compressive strength than Barre's, making it preferable for construction of larger, heavier structures such as buildings, bridges, and mausoleums.

Incorporation

The Voodry & Town granite quarry, located on the side of Robeson Mountain in Woodbury, was opened in 1880. Charles A. Watson, George O. Woodcock, and W.H. Fullerton incorporated the Woodbury Granite Company (WGC) in 1887. In 1888, after buying the Voodry & Town quarry, the WGC began operations there; this quarry came to be known as the Gray Quarry for the color of its stone. The quarry yielded a supply of large, defect-free slabs of uniformly-grained, medium-gray granite, which were well-adapted for building.Paul Wood, "Woodbury Granite Co.: a rural industrial giant", The Barre Montpelier Times Argus, Aug 6, 2007, updated Oct 27, 2018; accessed 2021-07-20. The company sold these rough-hewn stones to other companies, which finished them by trimming, cutting, and polishing the stone. In time, Ernest Fletcher, who owned the first Woodbury Quarry, acquired much of the Woodbury Company's stock.

The increase in demand for architectural granite ran up against bottlenecks in the supply chain, particularly in the transportation of quarried stone to cutting houses. By 1894, the Hardwick and Woodbury Railroad (H&W RR) was incorporated to transport granite from the Woodbury quarries (in particular the Carter and WGC quarries at Robeson Mountain) to the stone finishing sheds in Hardwick and the St. Johnsbury & Lake Champlain Railroad. Although enough capital was raised to begin construction of the H&W Railroad in 1895, the money ran out before the railroad was completed. Ernest Fletcher, the new owner of the Carter quarry, attempted to persuade the Town of Hardwick to buy railroad stock to fund the rest of the construction of the line, but in three successive votes, the town declined, amid a consensus that the quarry owners, not the town, would benefit.

In July of the same year, John S. Holden and Charles W. Leonard purchased the Woodbury Granite Company; this event would greatly affect Hardwick and Woodbury.Arthur W. Brayley, "Hardwick", in History of the Granite Industry of New England, Vol. II (1913). The company had not been enjoying great success simply selling rough quarry blocks to others for finishing; the value of its product was likely too small, and the difficulty of transporting it too great. Holden had owned a Pennsylvania oil refinery that he sold to the Standard Oil Co.; he reinvested the oil proceeds in textile mills and succeeded there as well, so he had considerable money to put into his next venture.

Leonard was a businessman with a number of interests, and had been a partner with Holden in a Bennington woolen mill. He went on to become a director of the Waltham Watch Company and a holding company for streetcar operations.Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Seventh Annual Report of the Public Service Commission, Part II: Statistics and Returns to December 31, 1919, Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1920, p. 473. The textile business was cooling, and the two were looking to diversify their investments. The reorganized Woodbury Granite Company was capitalized at ; its officers included Holden as president and Holden's son-in-law, George H. Bickford, as secretary and treasurer. Bickford was the only one of the three who was actively involved in the running of the company; the others were "silent partners".Arthur W. Brayley, "Pioneers of the Granite Industry", in History of the Granite Industry of New England, Vol. II, pp. 102-113 (1913). Holden's brother, Daniel, was assigned to the quarry and set about modernizing it; the new owners quickly installed two 75-ton derricks.

After both Hardwick and Woodbury declined to help fund the completion of the H&W RR, Messrs. Holden and Leonard bought enough shares in the railroad to insure its construction to the quarries.Paul Wood, "Rail to the Granite Mountain, Part 1: The Hardwick & Woodbury Railroad", The Hazen Road Dispatch, Vol. 43, pp. 1-11, Greensboro (Vt.) Historical Society, Summer 2019. With their purchase, control of the railroad passed from Fletcher and his allies, and the WGC became its plurality shareholder. People in Woodbury, especially, were concerned with this shift of control, but the railroad gave assurances of equal treatment of all local granite companies, and agreed to provide free switch connections in its first year. By 1897, the railroad was completed to the top of Robeson Mountain and the Woodbury quarries. Bickford replaced Daniel Holden as superintendent of the WGC in 1898. The quarries developed rapidly, and Woodbury Granite's success was secured.

Expansion