September 12, 2005

Everybody Must Get Stoned. A gallery of stone buildings and the type of stone from which they were constructed.
  • Those are amazing. Some of the buildings in Cumbria (green slate, third from the top) look like they have no mortar - how do they do that?
  • Interesting to think there are some areas where native stone houses are impossible, such as the alluvial plains of the Gulf Coast. Makes me wonder what they built the 19th century New Orleans buildings with... maybe they shipped stone down from Missouri? Great, now I'm gonna have a Bob Dylan earworm all night.
  • I noticed a lot of brick, actually, in the New Orleans footage.
  • I suspect the green slate close-up is actually a dry stone wall, not one of the houses pictured (?)
  • Good point, jb... forgot that all you need is clay... though a lot of that area is silty. Wonder if they had to dig it up.
  • Gneiss post, peacay!
  • rolypolyman - they probably would ship from up river. I think bricks were being shipped around England even in the seventeenth century - not so expensive if you have water travel, and worth it.
  • A gneiss schist!