Brownstone is a brown Triassic–Jurassic
Brownstone was a popular building material because it is unusually easy to quarry and carve; these qualities also make structures clad in it susceptible to weathering and damage over time.
Types
Apostle Island brownstone
In the 19th century,
Basswood Island,
Wisconsin was the site of a
quarry run by the Bass Island Brownstone Company, which operated from 1868 into the 1890s. The brownstone from this and other quarries in the
Apostle Islands was in great demand, with brownstone from Basswood Island being used in the construction of the first Milwaukee County Courthouse in the 1860s.
Hummelstown brownstone
Hummelstown brownstone is extremely popular along the East Coast of the United States, with numerous government buildings throughout West Virginia, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, and Delaware being faced entirely with the stone, which comes from the Hummelstown Quarry in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania, a small town outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The Hummelstown Quarry is the largest provider of brownstone on the east coast. Typically, the stone was transported out of Hummelstown through the Brownstone and Middletown Railroad.
Portland brownstone
Portland brownstone, also known as Connecticut River Brownstone, is also very popular. The stone from quarries located in Portland, Connecticut, and environs was used in a number of landmark buildings in
Chicago,
Boston, New York City,
Philadelphia, New Haven, Hartford, Washington, D.C., and
Baltimore.
New Jersey brownstone
Quarries from the Passaic Formation in northern
New Jersey once supplied most of the brownstone used in New York City and New Jersey.
South Wales brownstone
Devonian aged
sandstone is commonly used in Southern
Wales.
Use
In urban private residences
Brownstones appear throughout numerous New York City neighborhoods, especially in the
Brooklyn areas of
Park Slope, Clinton Hill,
Fort Greene, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Boerum Hill, Gowanus,
Windsor Terrace, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights,
Brooklyn Heights, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Sunset Park. Smaller concentrations exist in parts of Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Greenpoint, and Prospect Lefferts Gardens.
Brownstones are also scattered throughout Manhattan from the Lower East Side to Washington Heights, with notable concentrations in the Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Harlem and East Harlem. In Queens and The Bronx, the historic districts of Long Island City and Mott Haven also host many brownstones. Brownstones also predominate in some Hudson County neighborhoods directly across the Hudson River from Manhattan, especially in Hoboken
It has become fashionable to use the term "brownstone" to refer to almost any townhouse from a certain period, even though they may not have been built of brownstone. For example, many townhouses in Boerum Hill in Brooklyn are built of brick, but have concrete masonry cladding which resembles stone. There are also many brick townhouses that have brownstone-built stoops throughout the outer boroughs. Such neighborhoods that consist of these homes are Borough Park, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Bath Beach, Sunset Park, Kensington, Flatbush, Midwood, East New York, Cypress Hills in Brooklyn, Ridgewood, Glendale, Astoria, Woodhaven in Queens, and Longwood and Morrisania in the Bronx.
The Rittenhouse Square and Fairmount neighborhoods of Philadelphia also include examples of brownstone architecture. Many of these homes have been converted into apartment buildings.
Back Bay, Boston, is known for its Victorian brownstone homes – considered some of the best-preserved examples of 19th-century urban design in the United States.
Although some brownstones exist in Chicago, a similar residential form known as "greystones" is far more prevalent. A greystone is a type of residential structure that utilizes Indiana limestone for its facade, regardless of its overall architectural style. As in Brooklyn, there is a "Greystone Belt" in Chicago, with large numbers of such structures located in the south and northwest quadrants of the city. It is estimated that around 30,000 of Chicago's greystones built between 1890 and 1930 are still standing.
In colonial country homes
Brownstone, also known as freestone because it can be cut freely in any direction, was used by early Pennsylvanian Quakers to construct stone mills and mill houses. In central Pennsylvania, some 1700s-era structures survive, including a residence known as the Quaker Mill House.
In tombstones
Brownstone was prized by
tombstone carvers in southern New England and the Mid-Atlantic region during the Colonial era. Table-type memorials in particular were often carved out of brownstone as well as regular headstones. Especially valued for being easy to carve, those same characteristics often resulted in stones being less durable and prone to heavy erosion and wear over time, especially when compared to
slate or
schist gravestones of the same time period. Brownstone began losing popularity among carvers during the first few decades of the 1800s owing to the rising popularity of
marble, though it continued to be used for obelisks and other grave monuments until much later. Brownstone used for headstones was usually quarried from the Connecticut River Valley and
New Jersey, and many carvers especially in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey Worked with it.
See also
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Besançon, France, noted for building façades made of stone from the Chailluz Quarry
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Dimension stone
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Greystone
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Hummelstown Brownstone Company
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Railroad apartment
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Sandstone
External links
