thumb|275px|Burruss Hall — with Hokie Stone façade

thumb|275px|Hokie Stone [[façade detail, on O'Shaughnessy Hall]]

Hokie Stone is a grey dolomite-limestone rock found near Blacksburg, in western Virginia. It gets its name from the traditional nickname attributed to students and alumni of Virginia Tech.

Hokie Stone is quarried by Virginia Tech for campus projects and is prominently displayed on the majority of buildings throughout the Blacksburg campus.

Geology

Hokie Stone is limestone infused with magnesium and calcium under intense pressure and temperature. Hokie Stone with impurities such as siltstone and sandstone is multi-colored and found on some newer Blacksburg campus structures.

thumb|275px|South slope of the main quarry in Blacksburg

Quarry

Eighty percent of the stone is quarried from a Virginia Tech-owned quarry a few miles from campus near the Highland Park subdivision of Blacksburg, Virginia.

History

The native woodland Indians are believed to have made tools from Hokie Stone.

Between the late 1940s and the 1980s, a number of concrete and brick structures absent of Hokie Stone such as Hillcrest Hall, Shultz Hall (now known as the Moss Arts Center), Cowgill Hall, Litton Reaves Hall, Wallace Hall, Derring Hall (which ironically houses the geology department), the Cassell Coliseum and several residence halls on the Upper Quad were built. With the exception of Hillcrest Hall, which was built in the Gothic revival style in 1940 and clad in red brick, these were all modern structures and a radical departure from the architectural style of campus buildings built before World War II.

In 1975 the Tech Foundation bought the quarry from the local Cupp family. Today each campus project uses an average of 1,500 tons of Hokie Stone, with each ton of stone covering about 35 square feet. The use of the local stone may add as much as $1 million to the cost of a new building. The Virginia Tech football team enters the playing field at Lane Stadium through a tunnel with an exit topped by a block of Hokie Stone which is touched by each player. In 2011, Virginia Tech offered Hokie Stone as an option for the centerpiece of class rings.

On September 26, 2013, the football team wore helmets decorated in a Hokie Stone motif for their game at Georgia Tech.

<gallery widths="180px" heights="180px" perrow="4">

File:Hokie Stone Saw.JPG||alt=The saw that cuts Hokie Stone down to manageable sizes.

File:Hokie Stone Breaker.JPG||alt=The breaker that breaks Hokie Stone to sizes that can be easily handled.

File:Virginiatech-gargoyle-on-smythe.JPG||alt=Hokie Stone surface detail view, with gargoyle.

File:Arches at Virginia Tech.JPG||alt=Hokie Stone framing an arch on campus.

</gallery>

See also

  • Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University — Virginia Tech.
  • Virginia Tech campus
  • Virginia Tech Hokies
  • Collegiate Gothic in North America
  • Limestone buildings
  • List of types of limestone

References

  • Virginia Tech Board of Visitors: Resolution on Hokie Stone — "Attachment H" to minutes of 2010 meeting.