On this day in 1825, a Boston newspaper carried a notice seeking 9,000 tons of "the best Quincy granite" for the Bunker Hill Monument. This marked the beginning of the granite industry in Quincy. For the next 130 years, quarries in the South Shore town would provide much of the raw material that transformed Boston from a settlement of wood and brick into an impressive city of monumental stone structures. The industry also transformed Quincy. The quiet agricultural and fishing village grew into a small metropolis. Mined by stoneworkers from Italy, Scandinavia, and the Sudan, Quincy granite was exported around the country and the world. The introduction of reinforced concrete in the mid-twentieth century brought an end to Quincy's reign as the "Granite City."