reason that the state government of New York chose Sing Sing as the site of a new prison in 1825. From 1865 to 1871, hundreds of Scottish and Irish laborers blasted huge quantities of marble from the quarry at Hastings-on-Hudson. An inclined railroad carried it down to the quarry wharf on the Hudson River where it was dressed by skilled stonecutters and loaded onto ships and barges bound for New York City and beyond, as far as Charleston, South Carolina. By the 1880s, Hastings Pavement was producing the paving blocks used extensively in Central Park and Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Between 1895 and 1900, Hastings Pavement produced 10 million such blocks and shipped them throughout the U.S. and to cities in Canada, Brazil and England. White Tuckahoe marble supplied the early United States with a building material suitable for the neoclassical architecture popular in America's early public buildings. Tuckahoe Marble was the single most important white marble deposit in the country until the latter part of the 1800s, when development of the railroad made the extensive, high quality marble deposits of southwestern Vermont more available. Quarrying of Tuckahoe marble ceased in 1930. Buildings and structures Local Local structures constructed of Inwood marble include: New York Marble Cemetery (1830) burial vaults, aboveground walls, and engraved tablets New York City Marble Cemetery (1831) burial vaults and aboveground walls Colonnade Row/LaGrange Terrace (1832), Manhattan Marble Schoolhouse (1835), Eastchester, New York Federal Hall National Memorial (1842), Manhattan A.T. Stewart Company Store (also known as the Sun Building; the "Marble Palace") (1845–46), Manhattan Grace Episcopal Church (1846), Manhattan Brooklyn Borough Hall (1849) Marble Collegiate Church, Manhattan (1851-54) Seaman-Drake Arch. Manhattan (1855) St. Patrick's Cathedral (1858–78), Manhattan Tweed Courthouse (1861–72), Manhattan Washington Square Arch (1891), Manhattan Union Baptist Church (1904), New Rochelle Immaculate Conception Church (1911), Eastchester Distant Prominent uses of Tuckahoe marble beyond the New York City metropolitan area include: General Post Office (now the Hotel Monaco) (1842), Washington, D.C. Washington Monument (1848), Washington, D.C. Marble House (1888–92), Newport, Rhode Island See also List of types of marble References Further reading Torres, Louis (1976), Tuckahoe Marble: The Rise and Fall of an Industry in Eastchester, New York, 1822-1930; Harrison, N.Y., Harbor Hill Books. Urquhart, Gordon Ross (1986), The Architectural History of the Westchester Marble Industry; Unpublished Master's Thesis, School of Architecture, Columbia University. Ware, Robert Lamb (2001), A Comparison of Fresh and Weathered Marble from