New England Stone Completes WWII Memorial

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. – The long-awaited National World War II Memorial in Washington came about with some massive efforts – including the stone provided by New England Stone (NES) LLC.
NES operated as the stone quarrier and fabricator for the memorial, assisting the American Battle Monuments Commission and design architect Friedrich St. Florian with stone selection and finish. The North Kingstown company also was responsible for all shop drawings and joint positioning, as well as many other dimension determinations.
The memorial is 384’ long x 279’ wide and includes two main arches/memorial pavilions (43’ tall and 23’ square) symbolizing the Pacific and Atlantic theaters of battle. The memorial also holds 56 pillars, each 17’ tall, representing all the U.S. states and territories of the era, including the District of Columbia. .
All of the vertical elements of the monument, making up 75 percent of the stone used, is NES’ Kershaw® granite from South Carolina. Many of the Kershaw pieces for this project were so large that oversized blocks needed to be quarried to specific dimensions. Because of their size, the blocks had to be shipped by rail, and required high-capacity cranes to move them.
NES acquired three new CNC machines during the year-long production schedule, and utilized other fabricators in order to expedite production. While many pieces were cut with the new equipment, some complicated facets needed to be completed manually; the very time-consuming six-cut finish was applied by hand to a surface area greater than 100,000 ft².
Of the 17,644 pieces required for this project, only 12 required field tooling. 150,000 cubic feet of raw material was quarried to produce the fabricated 94,097 cubic-foot project; 15.5 million pounds of stone went to the job site for successful installation by Pagliaro Brothers Stone Co. of Upper Marlboro, Md.