Calcium oxide15 is known as lime1116 and is one of the top 10 chemicals1217 produced annually by thermal decomposition of limestone. The thermal decomposition of calcium carbonate to lime18 is one of the oldest chemical reactions known. For several thousand years, lime has been used in mortar (a paste of lime, sand and water) to cement stones to one another in buildings, walls and roads. The setting of mortar involves several chemical reactions.
1 Congregation Shearith Israel, 1654, Upper West Side, Manhattan, is the oldest congregation in New York and the United States. 2  Temple Society of Concord, 1839, Syracuse, New York.  Angel Orensanz Center, 1849, Lower East Side, Manhattan, is the oldest synagogue building still standing in New York State.
Some sources assert that what is likely the first American mosque building was a mosque in Biddeford, Maine that was founded in 1915 by Albanian Muslims. A Muslim cemetery still existed there in 1996. However the first purpose-built mosque building was probably a mosque opened in 1921 in Detroit, Michigan. It was close to the famous Highland Park Ford Plant which began mass, assembly-line production of Ford Model T cars in 1913, and where hundreds of Arab American men came to work.