Roxbury "Puddingstone"

More than 500 million years ago, as the continents drifted into their current locations, rocks from all over the world were deposited in the Boston Basin. Chunks of speckled granite, quartzite, and pink rhyolite mixed together, and deep underground finer sand and minerals were squeezed and pressed between the larger pieces, forming a natural cement. Later, over thousands of years, surface erosion exposed some of this conglomerate rock. When the first English settlers found so many outcroppings they named the town Rocksbury, meaning rocks borough, and called the rock puddingstone. With its lumpy texture, the bedrock under Roxbury resembles an old-fashioned fruit-filled pudding. Roxbury Puddingstone was once cut from Dudley Cliff on Malcolm X Boulevard and from Timothy McCarthy’s quarry on Parker Hill across from Mission Church, and it was used in buildings around Roxbury, in Copley Square, and beyond to Newton. Roxbury conglomerate is visible at nearby Horatio Harris Park, and the Abbotsford mansion in Roxbury, built in 1872 and home to the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, is constructed with puddingstone. When Roxbury conglomerate is polished, the variety of broken rocks, or clasts, embedded in the mix becomes clearly visible.

Boston, Massachusetts · United States