The Quarry

The Quarry. . , A significant chapter of Eli Whitney's legacy here is written in stone. Look at the foundations of the Barn, the Bridge, the Boarding House, the Forge. Whitney built structures to last. Eons ago, volcanic pressure lifted the East Rock sill and left a talus of basalt and diabase boulders along its base. This natural quarry yielded the stone that the floods of the Mill River and time have not moved. Traces of iron weathered the faces of some of these stones to a distinctive rusty orange-brown., The Forge and the Coal Storage Sheds were built almost entirely of stone, a hedge against the peril of fire., In 1814, the architect Ithiel Town persuaded Whitney to quarry 50,000 cubic feet of stone for the new Trinity Church to be constructed on the New Haven Green. The building's Gothic style distinguished it from its Congregationalist neighbors and nodded to Anglican tradition., Stone for the vastly enlarged dam constructed by Eli Whitney's son in 1860 was quarried just past the ridge that is now known as Whitney's peak., In 1820, his health failing, the elder Whitney summoned his nephew, Eli Whitney Blake, to help supervise the works at Whitneyville. This included the Quarry. A gifted mechanic, Eli Whitney Blake would later achieve fame for inventing the modern stone crushing machine. The study for that achievement began here., ( photo caption ) , , Trinity Church, on Green, New Haven, Conn.