Carved from Stone: Legacy of a Granite Town

Rhode Island PBS proudly premieres Carved from Stone: Legacy of a Granite Town at 9 p.m. on Wednesday, December 3. The film chronicles the processes, products, people, and legacy of the granite industry in Westerly, Rhode Island.

Written and produced by Westerly resident Betty-Jo Cugini, with director of photography and editor Jim Karpeichik, Carved from Stone: Legacy of a Granite Town is based on the book Built from Stone: The Westerly Granite Story.

The film shows Westerly granite as the "gold standard," with hundreds of blacksmiths, carvers, stonemasons, and other craftsmen brought from Europe to ply their artistry, each contributing to the reputation of the beauty of the work and the durability of the stone.

Photos, interviews, and rare archival film footage of workers at the quarry from around 1920 paint a vivid portrait of the hard work of the granite industry that thrived in Westerly from the late 1800s to the early 1900s.

Viewers will also travel to Gettysburg, where more than 70 monuments were built of Westerly granite, and on to Woodlawn Cemetery in New York, which boasts more than 30 Westerly granite mausoleums, statues, and other beautiful monuments.

Here is a link to the story in the Westerly Sun with insight about the film and Westerly granite.