In Praise of Limestone

Maternity BVM Catholic Church in Bourbonnais was built by its parishioners in the mid-1850s. It is the oldest church building in Kankakee County. (Kankakee County Museum Photo Archive)

By Jack Klasey February 8, 2025

No, the “limestone” being praised is neither Limestone Township (which has been around since 1853) nor the Village of Limestone (which was incorporated in 2006). While both are desirable places to live, work, and play, the focus of this story is on what lies beneath them: the yellowish mineral (“limestone” without the capital letter) formed hundreds of millions of years ago beneath a shallow, tropical sea.

A state publication on the Geology of Illinois explains that, beneath the sea, “the formation of carbonate mud and the deposition of billions of marine organisms, such as shells, algae and corals, formed limestone.” Over time, the layers of mud and the remains of plants and animals were compressed into limestone deposits as thick as 3,000 feet.

In some parts of Kankakee County, the limestone is buried beneath several feet of rich, black soil. In other areas, especially the appropriately named Limestone Township, the soil covering is often measured in inches, rather than feet.

Limestone found use here as a building material years before Kankakee County was formed in 1853. Pioneer settlers along the south bank of the Kankakee River in what is now Limestone Township used it to build stone walls enclosing their farm fields.

In a 1928 booklet issued by the Kankakee Chamber of Commerce, author James O’Donnell Bennett wrote:

“In the old days on this countryside it was the case of a ‘stake and rider’ fence for the farmyard and fields or a stone fence. If the farmer decided on a stone fence he and his boys became amateur quarriers and dug into the shallows of the Kankakee river for the limestone. The work must have been prodigious because to fence one field would mean, as you can see, thousands of slabs of limestone two or three inches thick and a foot or a foot and a half long. Their work was sterling and miles of it survive —ivy grown, mellowed by sun and frost and ennobling the green reaches of cornland and pasture with a sturdy aspect of permanency.”

Unfortunately, those stone fences (which gave their name to “Wall Street” in Kankakee) did not achieve “permanency.” Today, only scattered remnants of the fences remain along Illinois 113 between Court Street and Warner Bridge Road. Along that same stretch of road, however, a number of other early stone structures (“farmhouses, outbuildings, and tiny schoolhouses,” as Bennett described them) may still be seen.

The earliest stone quarry in what is now Kankakee County was located along the south bank of the river at Wiley Creek, about four miles northwest of Kankakee. In late 1852 or early 1853, as the Illinois Central Railroad was being built southward from Chicago, the company began quarrying limestone there. The stone slabs from the Wiley Creek quarry were used to build the support piers and abutments for the railroad’s bridge across the Kankakee River. A possible remnant of that first bridge abutment is visible along the railroad embankment at East Avenue and River Street.

The warm yellow color of locally quarried limestone provides a distinctive character to a number of the area’s oldest buildings.  A fine example is Maternity BVM Church in Bourbonnais. Work on the county’s oldest church building, a stone edifice to replace a wooden structure that had burned in late 1853, began in 1855 or 1856. Working to a plan provided by their Quebec-born pastor, the Rev. Isadore Lebel, the men of the congregation “took it upon themselves to begin construction with volunteer labor,” wrote Bourbonnais historian Adrien Richard. “The task was difficult. Stone was drawn from neighboring river beds and quarries, and hauling through muddy dirt roads with oxen-drawn carts would have discouraged the stoutest heart.” The church building was completed in 1858.

In 1863, a similar story unfolded when the men of the First Baptist Church accepted an offer of free stone from Solon Knight’s Kankakee quarry. For the next three years, the congregation’s members cut and dressed limestone blocks and hauled them to the building site on the northeast corner of Indiana Avenue and Court Street. They completed and opened their church in 1866.

During that 1860s-decade, two other notable limestone buildings were erected in downtown Kankakee. At about the same time the Baptist Church was being built, wealthy Kankakee farmer Lemuel Milk erected a large two-story stone carriage house and stable on Oak Street, west of Indiana Avenue. Today, that building (commonly referred to as “The Stone Barn”) serves as the Kankakee County Historical Society’s French Heritage Museum.

The second of the prominent downtown limestone buildings from the 1860s is the First Methodist (now Asbury) Church. The original church building was erected in 1867 on the northeast corner of Harrison Avenue and Merchant Street. Through the years, several additions extended the building northward to occupy two-thirds of the 100 block of S. Harrison Avenue. The additions were carefully planned to blend with the original building, using stone of a similar color.

In the 1880s, an entire small city of limestone buildings arose just south of Kankakee. The Illinois Eastern Hospital for the Insane (later Kankakee State Hospital; today Shapiro Developmental Center) consisted of dozens of structures, including the vast Administration Building with its soaring clock tower.

Limestone, of course, has more mundane —but still highly important—uses than serving as a building material. Local quarries still produce limestone products necessary for construction and agriculture. Gravel for roads and driveways, aggregate for use in concrete, and finely ground agricultural lime are all vital to our society.

However, for most people, the limestone worthy of praise and admiration is the rugged local product, with its warm yellow hue, used to shape the historic buildings in our communities.

*Note to English Lit majors: Yes, the title of this column was borrowed from poet W. H. Auden, who wrote “In Praise of Limestone” in 1948.

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Jack Klasey is a former Journal reporter and a retired publishing executive. He can be contacted at jwklasey@comcast.net.