NEW! Weiblen Finding Aid

The Southeastern Architectural Archive recently completed the full processing of the Albert Weiblen Marble and Granite Company Office Records. The collection consists of project drawings, photographs, sales specimens, correspondence, ledgers and indices. Highlights include drawings for the Josie Arlington tomb in Metairie Cemetery, the plaster model for the McCarthy Square Victory Arch, and a series of historic tomb images commissioned by architect Charles L. Lawhon of photographer Louis T. Fritch.

This and other SEAA finding aids may be found online here.

Image above:  “Albert Weiblen.” In W.K. Patrick & Assoc. Club Men of Louisiana in Caricature. East Aurora, NY: The Roycrofters, 1917. The Louisiana Research Collection, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Stone Mountain Granite Corp.

In 1911, the Weiblen Marble and Granite Company leased Stone Mountain, Georgia from Samuel and William Venable, operating there as the Stone Mountain Granite Corporation (SMGC) until 1936. Company founder Albert Weiblen (1857-1957), a German immigrant, gave SMGC operational responsibilities to his two sons, Frederick († 1927) and George († 1970).

The photograph above was taken by Reeves Studios, founded in Atlanta, Georgia (1914). The Atlanta History Center's Kenan Research Center has digitized a number of Reeves Studio photographs with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

Close attention to the cutting shed image above reveals a crane operator situated inside a Pawling & Harnischfeger 15-ton type "C" I-beam crane cab. Such cranes were used in lumber mills and granite quarries, and images of its use in these and other contexts may be found in a set of digitized images from the Wisconsin Historical Society.

The Southeastern Architectural Archive retains the records of the Weiblen Marble and Granite Company, as well as supplemental information pertaining to its Stone Mountain and Elberton, Georgia quarry operations. An inventory of holdings may be located here.

Stone Mountain granite was used on many New Orleans public projects, including the pedestal of the Lafayette Square Benjamin Franklin statue, the Huey P. Long Bridge, and -- at the request of City Engineer A.C. Bell -- was used to pave the riverfront between Thalia and Nuns Streets for the construction of the Pauline Street wharf.(1)

(1) "Dock Board Lets Paving Contract." The Daily Picayune (25.1.1913), p. 6.

Image above: Reeves Photo Atlanta. Stone Mountain Granite Corporation, Stone Mountain, Georgia, c. 1914-29. Weiblen Marble and Granite Works Office Records, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries.

Stone Mountain Granite/Graffiti

In 1901, the Atlanta-based Venable Brothers boasted that they had supplied the city of New Orleans with 25,000 feet of Georgia Granite for curbings and crossings (as opposed to the 900,000 feet for Atlanta). The company maintained quarries at both Stone Mountain and Lithonia, which were reached by railroad that was also owned and operated by the Venable Brothers.

In 1915, the United Daughters of the Confederacy commissioned sculptor Gutzon Borglum (1867-1941) to survey the Ku Klux Klan rebirth site for a monument intended as a memorial to the Confederacy, the "Lost Cause Shrine". World War I delayed the project. Eventually Borglum and his patrons parted ways over disagreements, Borglum destroyed his models, and Augustus Lukeman (1871-1935) was hired to complete the work.

Lukeman informed the supervising body -- the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association -- that Borglum's unfinished carving could never be completed, and recommended an altered design, smaller in scale, featuring equestrian figures of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. Borglum's carving was sandblasted away from Stone Mountain's face. The Crash of 1929 shut down operations again, and work did not resume on the project until 1958, when the Georgia State Legislature created the official Stone Mountain Memorial Association, and authorized it to sell revenue bonds.

The Massachusetts-based sculptor Walker Hancock (1901-1998) took over the project, following Lukeman's models. New Orleans stone carver George Weiblen (1895-1970) was ultimately commissioned to supervise the 7 carvers working on the site in the 1960s. Weiblen and his wife lived in a trailer at the mountain's base. On 25 March 1966, The Atlanta Journal reported that the stone carving was costing $442.80/day in wages, including those of Mr. Weiblen. In the same article, the 70-year-old New Orleans tomb designer conveyed his reasons for taking on the project:

'I want to put my father's name there, too. He brought his family from New Orleans in 1911 to open a quarry on the back side of Stone Mountain and he leased the whole mountain. He offered the Venable Brothers a million dollars for it in 1920. He died in 1961 at the age of 99 and five months. He said he wanted to lie down before breakfast and he took one deep breath and he was gone. I don't know how I will work his name in but there is a way."

George Weiblen died at Stone Mountain in 1970, the same year Vice President Spiro T. Agnew dedicated the monument. It is now part of an expansive theme park that draws millions of visitors annually.

To read more documents related to the project, click here.

To read excerpts from David Freedman's 1997 book, Carved in Stone: The History of Stone Mountain, on googlebooks, click here.

To read the Smithsonian's oral history with Walker Hancock, click here.

[Photograph above: Frank Rippetoe. Stone Carver at Stone Mountain, Georgia.
8 March 1964. Box 64, Weiblen Marble and Granite Company Collection, Southeastern Architectural Archive, Special Collections Division, Tulane University Libraries].