The durable bluepstone's color palette extends beyond its namesake "blue" to shades of grey, brown, green and lilac, much like this bluestone mosaic from Connecticut Stone Supply.
Photo courtesy of Connecticut Stone Supply

By Todd Messelt

In the Northeastern United States where the stone has been quarried since the early 1800s, bluestone has been embraced by architects and designers as a versatile, colorful, flagging and coping material. While it remains a traditional favorite in the Northeast, purveyors of bluestone have enjoyed an ever-growing market that has reached every corner of the United States.

The durable bluestone's color palette extends beyond its namesake "blue" to shades of grey, brown, green and lilac. As a paving stone, its colors enable a diversity of possibilities, ranging from whimsical mosaics of irregular shapes to cleaner designs that incorporate a rectilinear, monochromatic approach. More recently, architects and designers have pushed the creative envelope by specifying newer bluestone treatments for countertops, flooring and interior facing.

Widely known as "Pennsylvania bluestone," the material's popular moniker is a double-misnomer, not only because of the material's breadth of color, but also because it exists outside of Pennsylvania, with deposits reaching into southern New York. A few pockets of similar material can be found elsewhere in the world, but anyone hoping to find it in states other than New York and Pennsylvania can save the time and expense and learn from Dan Thomas, vice president of Star Stone Sales in Salt Lake City.

"When we originally started here in Utah, we heard an urban legend that there were bluestone deposits here in the mountains of Utah and Idaho," Thomas explained. "So my father and I started going out and prospecting on weekends. We'd go up into the mountains and search and prospect. We searched and searched and searched and searched, and could never find any. We did a lot of prospecting until we found it in New York State."

The Thomas family's subsequent decision to begin quarrying flagstone and heavy, block bluestone in New York was well advised. "The growth in the bluestone industry has been tremendous," Thomas said. "From 1970 to 2004, it grew 1,400 percent — and most of that has been in the last 10 years."

A Texture for Every Use
In Meshoppen, Pa., Bill Ruark is the owner of Meshoppen Stone Inc., a company that has been quarrying bluestone exclusively for 40 years. The family-owned business owns or leases about a dozen bluestone quarries in Pennsylvania and also operates three fabrication facilities.

Ruark said bluestone is widely marketed in three textures: natural cleft, flame-finished and polished. He said the natural cleft variety is popular for exterior uses, and the company is also seeing it used for interior flooring of foyers and hallways. Flame-finished and polished surfaces are used mostly for architectural-grade applications.

In New England, where bluestone has long been common fare, the material continues to enjoy popular status, said Jennifer Wies, a partner at Quarry Connections in Middletown, Md. The company specializes in furnishing trailer loads of stone for large projects and supplies high-volume masons and landscapers.

"I've been helping people with selection for many years, and they'll come to me and say 'I want something different.' I'll show them 10 things that are different, and a lot of times they'll end up going with something that they're comfortable with, which is what they've seen for many years," she said. "They've worked with bluestone, they know the product, and there's really no reliable alternative."

Bluestone can be used in a variety of forms, from flagging, wallstone and coping, to stair treads and veneer.
Photo courtesy of Connecticut Stone Supply

Beyond Blue
Bluestone is available in two, basic color groups: variegated (full-color) or select. Full-color bluestone includes the blue, grey, green, brown and lilac tones; select bluestone has a more consistent coloration, with primarily steel blue to blue-grey with some greenish hues.

"We tend to be able to get select blue in nice slabs," Wies said. "It's really the most accessible when you want to do specialty cuts because the slabs tend to be from the most solid blocks. Sometimes, people will want to match treads with the full-color range, but it's a little harder to get slabs that don't have reeding [parallel grooves] within the block."

Interior designer Nancy Barden, who is also the sales manager for Barden Stone in Memphis, Tenn., said most of her clients prefer full-color bluestone for its variety of color, in addition to its relative affordability.

"Full-color ranges between $5 to $6 per square foot," she said. "If you color-select, you might be looking at a $1 or $2 per square foot up-charge. It all depends on what the quarry is demanding.

"It's affordable for any kind of flooring application, and can also be used inside," Barden added. "If it's durable enough to be used outside, it's definitely durable enough to be inside. We have it in the whole downstairs of our family house."

Whether its cut in regular or irregular shapes, bluestone provides designers and owners a clean, crisp look.
Photo courtesy of Quarry Connections

Design Trends
Tyra Dellacroce is the general manager of Connecticut Stone Supplies in Milford, Conn., which imports, manufactures and distributes stone for large-scale residential and commercial projects. "There's been a trend in the industry toward the desire and need to seek different sorts of textures, so architects have been specifying bluestone in different formats and finishes," Dellacroce said. "The cost does go up a little bit because there's another step in the labor process to deliver the textures and the finishes that they want."

With the growing trend toward modern designs, many architects are specifying sawn and flamed bluestone since its thickness and texture is consistent. "So rather than having large angulations in the natural cleft, it's going to have a consistent texture and a modern look," Dellacroce said. "You can get monochromatic color and monolithic texture by having a flamed surface.

"A lot of architects like the clean, crisp look that the stone provides. So we are manufacturing slabs for countertops and fireplace facings, and we are manufacturing it in a thinstone as well.

"It's a neat product right now because architects and designers are taking a traditional, New England colonial stone and finding a way to give it new life."

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