For all its reputation as a bastion of Yankee wealth, Greenwich, Connecticut, has a more humble and gritty aspect to its 19th-century history: it was a place of rock quarries—quarries that provided granite for many local and New York structures.

This geological heritage was much on the mind of architect Steve Dumez, principal and design director at EskewDumezRipple (EDR), the firm that designed the stone-inspired $67 million expansion of the city’s Bruce Museum. “There was a vision for the project that it should powerfully connect to its place, that it grow from the site,” Dumez says. “We submitted two schemes, one called Quarry and the other called Lace,” he explains. In Quarry, textured stone evokes shade and shadow. By contrast, Lace was a configuration that was, in effect, a hanging curtain of stone with solids and voids, offering edited peeks from the inside and outside. “They liked aspects of both,” he continues, “so they asked us to combine them into one.”