Walking Tour – Houston Building Stones – Earth Science Week Sunday Oct 15, 2006

            Neal Immega

 

The tour starts at 2 PM in front of One Shell Plaza (900 Louisiana). The tour will end at the Main Street train stop about 4 PM. I will be riding the train to and from downtown.

 

  1. Houston Public Library  - 55 McKinney

South Dakota Mahogany Granite with pegmatite veins.

The granite works has a great web site with lots of details.

http://www.dakgran.com/web/story.asp

 

  1. Houston City Hall –  901 Bagby

Walls are Austin Stone (Cordova Shell) containing fossil shells. Cretaceous in age. Lots of Trignonia, gastropods, some rudists.     http://www.cordovastone.com/about.htm

Pavement is Indiana Bedford Oolite . It is cut parallel to bedding showing excellent festoon trough cross bedding. Corner stone is also Bedford oolite.     http://www.kiva.net/~jonjeff/Limestone.htm

 

  1. One Shell Plaza  - 900 Louisiana

Italian travertine. (Travertino Romano)  Deposited by algae in freshwater hot springs. http://www.iltravertino.com/pagine/thecompany.html

 

  1. Dynergy

Black facing stone is a basic rock from Norway called Larvikite.  http://www.toyen.uio.no/geomus/nettutstillinger/Osloriften/larvikitt-eng.html

Pavement is granite with zoned and poikilitic feldspars.

 

  1. Esperson Building   808 Travis, 815 Walker

Town Mountain Granite from Austin, Bedford oolite, marble and serpentine (Verde Antique)

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rmr/tmg.html  http://www.vermontmarbleandgranite.com/marble/vermont_verde_ant.htm

 

  1. Jesse Jones Building – JPMorgan Chase    712 Main St.

Outside is scored Indiana limestone. Interior has marble, travertine (a flowstone deposit)

 

  1. Jones Hall for the Performing Arts  - 615 Louisiana  - Italian travertine

 

  1. On the way we will see gneiss, various colors of granite, flame cut granite paving, sculptured granite, and talk about modern construction techniques for facing with thin slabs.