About Us
Granite Industries of Vermont is a state-of-the-art mill that carves, sculpts, and laser etches granite and marble. We create the highest quality private and public memorials and monuments in the country. You can see our work in cemeteries throughout the nation, and at Grant’s Tomb in New York City, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., and at all of our National Cemeteries.
While the name of the company is just 25 years old, it has been in business for over a hundred years. The founders were cousins, Constantino and Guido Valz. After immigrating to this country in the early 1890s, Constantino apprenticed with his uncle in New Hampshire for eight years before moving to Barre. Four years later, in 1901, he formed a partnership with his cousin Guido, opening for business in a shed on a meadow along the Jail Branch River. The names their company Valz Brothers. Two years later, business was booming, which allowed the cousins to purchase the present site and build our main building, still in operation. The facility they built was considered very modern at the time, eventually employing 21 men. The company specialty was medium to large size monuments. Then as now, their work was sent all over the country.
In the early 1940s, Henry Vanetti acquired Valz Brothers. Unfortunately the business fell on hard times in the 1970s. It was liquidated and its assets were sold in 1980. The new owners, Silvio Nativi and Herman Goldberg, incorporated the new company as Granite Industries of Vermont. They moved the focus of the business away from the manufacture of monuments to concentrate on large-scale building. Under their ownership, Granite Industries of Vermont supplied stone for the AT&T building in New York City, the Bristol Meyers headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut, and the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, DC, among others. They sold the company to the present owners, Glen Atherton and Jeff Martell in 1988.
Today, Granite Industries is once again run in the tradition of the Valz cousins, producing monuments of all sizes in a state-of-the-art facility.
To learn more about Granite Industries of Vermont and the history of the granite industry in Vermont, visit our history.