lookout point
The Marquette County Courthouse, built in 1904 with Marquette sandstone, is an iconic Romanesque Revival building that in 1958 was site of the filming of the blockbuster movie, “Anatomy of a Murder” that starred Jimmy Stewart, Lee Remick, George C. Scott and Ben Gazzara.
SOLID HISTORY
U.P. communities rebuilt using sandstone after devastating fires Story and photos by Sonny Longtine
F
ire! In the later years of the 19th century, no other word could instill more fear into the hearts of residents by the shores of the world’s largest fresh-water lake in the cities of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Devastating fires had razed entire business districts in Marquette in 1868, Hancock in 1869, and Red Jacket (Calumet) in 1870. The fire in Marquette alone destroyed more than 100 buildings. The small Upper Peninsula towns were devastated by the fires. It became imperative that wood structures be replaced with either brick or stone —anything not so easily combustible—and sandstone became that replacement. Lake Superior sandstone was highly prized for its beauty and toughness; it was well suited to rebuilding Upper
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Peninsula towns. The great fires also led many towns to adopt fire codes and to acquire adequate firefighting equipment. Lake Superior sandstone was quarried in three primary locations: Marquette and Jacobsville in the Upper Peninsula and Bayfield, Wis. Although there were more than 70 sites in the Lake Superior region that quarried sandstone, most did not compare with the volume produced by these three. The sandstone quarried in Marquette was called brownstone because of its brown-purple hue, while the sandstone quarried in Jacobsville was called redstone, again because of its coloration. Bayfield primarily produced redstone, although colors ranged from pink to light brown. Marquette sandstone was extracted from a quarry close to Lake Superior
November 2021
in South Marquette, while the Copper Country sandstone was quarried at Jacobsville, a small location in the southeast corner of the Keweenaw Peninsula and near the Portage Canal. The highly sought sandstone was shipped to the Midwest cities of Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Chicago, and Detroit, and to other points south. Chicago’s Tribune Building, the Germania Bank in St. Paul, and the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, all prestigious and well-known buildings, are among hundreds of structures that were built with Lake Superior sandstone. Its quality and durability was nationally recognized. The burly stone was not only aesthetically pleasing but also fire resistant. Sandstone can endure temperatures up to 800 degrees before it will crack or crumble. Granite and limestone cannot endure exceedingly
high temperatures as sandstone can. In the Upper Peninsula where 80 degrees is considered a heat wave, but where fires had ravaged towns, there was little hesitation in using the sandstone. Sandstone can not only withstand extreme temperature changes, but is able to retain solar heat in the winter. Not only was sandstone easily obtainable but there was a ready workforce in the Upper Peninsula to process it. It was ordained for greatness as it became the material used in many of the peninsula’s finest courthouses, commercial buildings, and homes. The demand for sturdy and sizable buildings was also driven by the prosperity created by burgeoning iron ore and copper mining in the peninsula in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Money was now available for
