The Vermont Marble Museum or Vermont Marble Exhibit is a museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 commemorating the contributions of Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

 marble

Marble

Marble is a metamorphic rock composed of recrystallized carbonate minerals, most commonly calcite or dolomite.Geologists use the term "marble" to refer to metamorphosed limestone; however stonemasons use the term more broadly to encompass unmetamorphosed limestone.Marble is commonly used for...

 and the Vermont Marble Company, located in Proctor, Vermont

Proctor, Vermont

-Notable people:* Bernard Joseph Flanagan, bishop* F. Ray Keyser, governor of Vermont* Frank Charles Partridge, senator* Fletcher Dutton Proctor, governor of Vermont* Mortimer Robinson Proctor, governor of Vermont...

, USA. The museum is located in a wing of one of the former Vermont Marble Company buildings.

Vermont Marble Company

The Vermont Marble Company was founded in 1880 by businessman and politician Redfield Proctor

Redfield Proctor

Redfield Proctor was a U.S. politician of the Republican Party. He served as the 37th Governor of Vermont from 1878 to 1880, as Secretary of War from 1889 to 1891, and as a United States Senator for Vermont from 1891 to 1908....

, who served as the company's first president. Marble was quarried from several locations in the town of Proctor, then called Sutherland Falls, and the surrounding communities of Rutland

Rutland (town), Vermont

Rutland is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. The population was 4,054 at the 2010 census. Rutland completely surrounds the city of Rutland, which is incorporated separately from the town of Rutland.-History:...

, West Rutland and Danby

Danby, Vermont

Danby is a town in Rutland County, Vermont, United States. The population was 1,311 at the 2010 census.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the town has a total area of , of which is land and , or 0.22%, is water.-Geology:...

. As railroads arrived in Rutland and Proctor, the Vermont Marble company became one of the largest producers of marble in the world. The company contributed marble to the Washington Monument

Washington Monument

The Washington Monument is an obelisk near the west end of the National Mall in Washington, D.C., built to commemorate the first U.S. president, General George Washington...

, United States Supreme Court building

United States Supreme Court building

The Supreme Court Building is the seat of the Supreme Court of the United States. It is situated in Washington, D.C. at 1 First Street, NE, on the block immediately east of the United States Capitol. The building is under the jurisdiction of the Architect of the Capitol. On May 4, 1987, the Supreme...

, Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery

Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington County, Virginia, is a military cemetery in the United States of America, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Confederate general Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna Lee, a great...

, and Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...

. The surrounding town was named after Redfield Proctor and became a company town

Company town

A company town is a town or city in which much or all real estate, buildings , utilities, hospitals, small businesses such as grocery stores and gas stations, and other necessities or luxuries of life within its borders are owned by a single company...

.

The buildings and quarries of the Vermont Marble Company are now owned by OMYA

Omya

Omya is a privately owned global producer of industrial minerals, mainly fillers and pigments derived from calcium carbonate, and a worldwide distributor of chemical products. The company's major markets are paper, plastics, coatings and adhesives....

, a supplier of industrial minerals.

Exhibit

The exhibit offers self-guided tours focusing on the company's history; the geology of marble and other local stones; and the uses of marble in art, architecture, and industry. A short video narrates the history of the Vermont Marble Company, and historical photographs of VMC workers quarrying, carving, and shipping Vermont marble are displayed throughout the exhibit. Several geologic exhibits, including an artificial cave and a preserved triceratops

Triceratops

Triceratops is a genus of herbivorous ceratopsid dinosaur which lived during the late Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous Period, around 68 to 65 million years ago in what is now North America. It was one of the last dinosaur genera to appear before the great Cretaceous–Paleogene...

skeleton are also on display. A display containing large slabs of decorative stone, including the local Danby white and deep green verde antique. This display also includes local granite

Granite

Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

s and imported marbles. Numerous sculptures, including busts

Bust (sculpture)

A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...

 of nearly all the U.S. presidents, The Last Supper

The Last Supper (Leonardo)

The Last Supper is a 15th century mural painting in Milan created by Leonardo da Vinci for his patron Duke Ludovico Sforza and his duchess Beatrice d'Este...

, and other works are scattered throughout the museum. An artists' studio allows visitors to watch carving demonstrations and ask questions of local sculptors. The architectural uses of marble are displayed in a small chapel and a modern kitchen and bathroom surfaced in stone. Visitors may also get a balcony view of one of the large 19th-century warehouses of the Vermont Marble Company, now used by OMYA.

A nearby quarry

Quarry

A quarry is a type of open-pit mine from which rock or minerals are extracted. Quarries are generally used for extracting building materials, such as dimension stone, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, and gravel. They are often collocated with concrete and asphalt plants due to the requirement...

(now defunct), located about a quarter mile from the museum itself, has recently been added to the exhibit. Other areas around the exhibit, while not officially part of the museum, can also be visited. The grounds around the exhibit hold large chunks of quarried, unfinished marble. The town Proctor has many sidewalks made of marble, and the high school and Catholic church are both faced in local stone. Most of the buildings of the former Vermont Marble Company still stand, and many are constructed of Vermont marble.

The exhibit also contains an extensive gift shop and cafe containing marble goods, both local and imported, and visitors can inquire about the purchase and installation of larger pieces.