Indiana Limestone, also known as Bedford Limestone is a common regional term for Salem limestone, a geological formation primarily quarried in south central Indiana, United States between Bloomington and Bedford.
Bloomington, Indiana has been noted to have the highest quality quarried limestone in the United States. Salem limestone, like all limestone, is a rock primarily formed of calcium carbonate. The limestone was deposited over millions of years as marine fossils decomposed at the bottom of a shallow inland sea which covered most of the present-day Midwestern United States during the Mississippian Period.
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Native Americans were the first people to discover limestone in Indiana. Not long after they arrived, American settlers used this rock around their windows and doors and for memorials around the towns. The first quarry was started in 1827, and by 1929 Hoosier quarries yielded 12,000,000 ft3 (340,000 cubic meters) of usable stone. The expansion of the railroads brought great need for limestone to build bridges and tunnels and Indiana was the place to get it.
American architecture of the late 19th and early 20th century included a lot of limestone detail work on buildings, but as architectural styles changed, so did the demand of limestone. Salem limestone was officially designated as the state stone of Indiana by the Indiana General Assembly in 1971.[1] With the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, the price of alternative building materials skyrocketed so Indiana Limestone reemerged as an energy-efficient building material.[2]
Indiana limestone is part of a high-end market. It is mostly used on the exterior of homes and commercial buildings. With the impact of acid rain it is not used in monuments as it was in the 19th century. Many of Indiana's official buildings, such as the State capitol building, the monuments in Downtown Indianapolis, the Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, many buildings at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the Indiana Government Center, and most of the state's 92 courthouses are all examples of Indiana architecture made with Indiana limestone. Indiana limestone has also been used in many other famous structures in the United States, such as the Empire State Building, the Pentagon, the St. Anthony Society Chapter House at Yale,[3] and the Washington National Cathedral. In addition, 35 of the 50 state capitol buildings are made of Indiana limestone.[4]
Buildings such as the Biltmore Estate, Empire State Building, The Pentagon, Hotel Pennsylvania and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum feature Indiana limestone in their exteriors. Indiana limestone was used extensively in rebuilding Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire. Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, New York, opened in 2009, extensively utilizes Indiana Limestone paneling on its exterior facade. The original 1930s buildings of Rockefeller Center use limestone from Bedford. In 1955 the Tennessee State Capitol exterior was renovated using Indiana Limestone to replace the poorer quality Tennessee Limestone that had started to deteriorate. Indiana limestone has been particularly popular for the construction of university buildings in the Midwest. The Neogothic campus of the University of Chicago is almost entirely constructed out of Bedford Indiana Limestone, in keeping with the trend of post-Fire buildings using the material. The campus of Washington University in St. Louis, both new construction and its original buildings, makes use of Indiana Limestone (along with Missouri Red Granite) in its collegiate gothic architecture. The majority of Indiana University (Bloomington Campus) was constructed out of limestone. In addition, many buildings on the north side of Michigan State University use Indiana limestone. The rock was used as far north as the Hotel Macdonald in Edmonton.