Metropolitan RockitoriumPeter Menzie (1940)
About the Artist/Site
Interviewed in 1967 about his rock installation in Pittsford, New York, Peter Menzie said: “How did I get interested in rocks? Well, we live in a cobblestone house, and I guess that started me off.” Menzie began displaying a range of collected boulders in his yard in the Rochester suburbs as a young man. At age 27, already having accrued an impressive variety, he hired a hauling contractor to move a 46 ton granite glacial erratic from nearby Penfield to the yard. Menzie, a hobby geologist, believed that the massive granite boulder was the largest known erratic in the region as of 1967, and that it had likely traveled over 400 miles from Ontario during the glacial encroachments of the Ice Age. After Menzie discovered the boulder on the campus of Dolomite Products Corp. in Penfield, the collector negotiated for a year to have it moved by crane to his yardshow, which he subsequently began calling the Metropolitan Rockitorium. Menzie displayed his collections in piles, stacks, and rows throughout the yard, and also worked the rocks into sculptural forms comprised of salvaged objects such as shopping carts, sheet metal, hubcaps, barbed wire, and agricultural equipment.
Narrative by Gabrielle Christiansen, 2024
Sources:
- Peter Menzie interviewed by Graham Cox, “Just Right for a Mantel,” The Times Union, Rochester, New York, November 2, 1967.
- Gregg Blasdel photographic slides, 1977, Collection of SPACES Archives
Contributors
Map & Site Information
3539 Clover Street
Pittsford, New York
Latitude/Longitude: 43.0457071 / -77.5707855
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