Chicago and Bedford Stone Company

Imperial Blue Limestone

The Chicago and Bedford Stone Company was an American limestone quarrying firm organized in the late 19th century by the Hinsdale-Doyle Granite Co and the New England Granite Works to extract stone from Bedford, Indiana. Its original officers were N C Hinsdale, S S Kimball, and James M Reynolds, with F M Melick serving as secretary and Julius White as president. By about 1895, leadership had shifted to H L Thornton, president and general manager and E B Thornton, secretary.

Their first quarry, the Blue Hole, contained three distinct beds, producing two differnt colors of stone. The middle layer was an unusually fine-grained bluestone averaging roughly 2 feet 6 inches in thickness. Although about half of the quarry's output was buff limestone, the company's most prized material was the deep-toned "Imperial Blue," widely used in Gilded Age architecture. The stone supplied the Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion, the W K Vanderbilt residence, and the Collis P Huntington house in New York City, all later demolished. Surviving examples of Imperial Blue include Robert Goelet's residence at Narragansett Avenue in Newport, Rhode Island, and the Studebaker (Fine Arts) Building in Chicago. Blue Hole Quarry, originally founded by Nathan Hall, was located on the eastside of Bedford, about four blocks north of what would be 150 16th Street. The wooded area has limited access. - AsNotedIn