I found this amazing photograph of the Gottlieb and George Eyerman Quarry at 5100 Virginia Avenue. It seems to have been open from the late Nineteenth Century; wages were 25 cents an hour in the early Twentieth Century but it was “steady work,” according to job announcements. The Eyermans also owned a quarry on South Grand just south of the Fruin-Bambrick Quarry at Chouteau Avenue, as well as another at Crittenden and Iowa. At least the latter became a garbage dump, which I think was a common use for closed quarries in the city.

As I mentioned before, I think I’ve found evidence of workers’ houses on Hill Street and on Minnesota Avenue. The book from which the illustration below comes gives a foot by foot description of the strata of the quarry. I’ll spare readers the full breakdown, but it was clay for about twenty feet, before hitting limestone. The Eyermans must have had a brisk construction business because the stone quarried here went primarily to their own building projects. Water was pumped from the bottom straight into the city’s sewer system.