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May 22, 2008, 09:24 AM ET
How Emory U. Got Its 'Calico' Buildings
The original buildings at Emory U. are clad in interlocking tiles of pink and gray marble, most from local quarries. (Photographs by Xinmin Li)
Atlanta — “They didn’t have a hell of a lot of money, but they had connections and taste,” began Jen Fabrick, university architect at Emory University, telling the story of how Emory’s founders gave the campus its distinctive gray and pink marble-clad buildings.
“They asked [Frederick Law] Olmsted‘s firm who would be a good master planner for the campus, and that’s how [Henry] Hornbostel was introduced. He came down here … and said the hills and ravines reminded him of an Italian hill town, so he decided the campus needed a hill-town Italian look.
“Emory wanted him to start all these projects, but there wasn’t a lot of money. So he went up to North Georgia, where the marble quarries are. And when you go to the marble quarries, they bring out the marble in blocks and they saw the marble into slabs. Then the slabs are used to cut into the actual pieces. Well, he saw all these slab remnants there, and he said, ‘I’ll just buy all of them, because I can get those cheaper than I can get new fresh material.’ There is no difference — marble lasts forever.
“So he brought them to the campus and he had people cut them into pieces. That’s how we got that calico pattern — I call it a calico pattern…. He just came up with these patterns based on the array of marble that he had. I’ve always wanted to sit down and figure out what the pattern is….
“There is a lot of marble in North Georgia, in Tate. The thing is, the quarries have been bought and re-bought and leased over the years, so we’ve had to learn to work with different groups. At some times, the quarries were closed, and we had to go to Portugal to get marble that is similar.
“The pink marble is called Etowah — that’s Indian. And the gray marble is called Cherokee White or Cherokee Gray….
“The problem right now is the pink marble quarry is not operating. It’s full of water, and it’s bounded on two sides by a river and a railroad track. So you either have to move the river or you have to move the railroad track to do more quarrying.”
She noted that the quarry is leaning toward moving the river. —Scott Carlson
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