In December we wrote about RDDA’s work on one of the ten largest houses in America in Springfield, Missouri.

When RDDA began work on the house, we knew the project would be an adventure, but little did we know that we would take part in the making of history.

The predominant feature of the front facade is a two-story porch with a colonnade comprised of ten free-standing columns. The columns are twenty-eight feet tall and the one-piece marble shafts of the columns are twenty-five feet tall.  These columns shafts are the tallest in the history of the world made from a single piece of stone.

Additionally, when finished, the entire exterior wall of the Federal-style house will be clad in cream-colored marble.

Given this extensive (to say the least) use of marble, it’s no surprise that the selection of the marble was given high priority. Consequently, last year Richard Davis traveled with the stone mason, Mark Johnson, to the mountains outside Sofia, Bulgaria to visit the Bravo Quarry to view the fabrication of the marble columns and exterior stone walls.

The quarry is famous for the quality and hardness of its marble.

To get an idea of the size of these pieces of marble, here is one of the blocks of marble ready to be shaped into a column shaft.

Chad Clay, President of Killian Construction Company, the general contractors for the project, and Mark Johnson, owner of Architectural Stone Company, the stone installers, are shown with the raw block.

The marble is called Veneto Light and is 13,500 psi compression strength.

The fabrication plant turned and shaped the columns using CNC robotic saws and shapers.  The plant owner commissioned a custom-made machine for turning these massive column shafts.  The photo above shows one of the columns on the lathe.

In this photo Richard Davis is at the fabrication plant standing with a few of these record-setting column shafts.

Here, Richard is sitting on one of the column bases.

These huge pieces of marble were shipped to New York, then delivered by train to Kansas City, and then traveled by truck to Springfield, Missouri to the site of the project, via Prime Inc.

The columns have now been erected in their new home. Six are shown here with four still to come, where, more than likely, they will remain for centuries to come.

Even from a distance these columns make a dramatic statement.

This project, although still far from finished, is definitely shaping up to be one for the history books–and RDDA is thrilled to be playing a role in it.