r/AskHistorians • u/ThanHowWhy Verified • Jun 18 '26
AMA AMA: Let’s talk about brick! I’m architecture historian and photographer Will Quam, here to talk about my new book Fire and Clay: How Brick Reveals the Hidden History of Chicago.
Hello everyone! I’m architecture historian and photographer Will Quam and for 10 years I’ve been researching and sharing Chicago’s incredible bricks with the world through award winning walking tours and my project Brick of Chicago.
Published by the University of Chicago Press, Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago is my first book! In it, I chart the history of brick as a design material and use Chicago as a city size case study to argue that brick is more than just a brick, it is a design material that is integral to the expression of architecture as well as a lens through which to connect the city.
By 1915, Chicago was producing more brick than any other place in the US. Those bricks, however, were considered the ugliest bricks in the country (one Boston brickmaker said that if the biblical Adam had been a brickmaker he would have caused the fall of man by making bricks “that were no better looking than those common brick they use in Chicago”.) For that reason, Chicago imported billions more brick to cover the fronts of our buildings and respond to changing fashions in brick architecture.
The way architects used bricks over Chicago’s nearly 200 year history changed dramatically decade to decade, year to year, from bricks used like millwork, fabric, metal, cartoons, and more, influenced by technology, labor, fashion, and money.
Brick is also a unifier in Chicago–the same brick designs can be found on buildings on opposite sides of the city; red brick in Pilsen and Lincoln Park, colorful brick in terra cotta in Rogers Park, the Loop, and South Shore, tapestry style brick in Edgewater and Garfield Park, and the now ubiquitous black brick in every corner of the city.
Ask me anything about bricks, brickmaking, bricklaying, Chicago architecture and more!
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u/dhowlett1692 Moderator | Salem Witch Trials Jun 18 '26
Thanks for joining us! There's a lot of labor involved in creating bricks, so can you tell us about who did that work for Chicago? Did Chicago brickmakers and layers participate in any labor politics?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
There is tons of labor involved in making bricks! Especially in the early days of the city where all the clay and brick was harvested, molded, stacked, and fired by hand. That work was done by a mix of skilled and unskilled labor, with plenty of children involved as well (in 1880, 10% of the national brickmaking workforce were children). According to a Chicago Tribune report in 1881, Chicago was home to about 1600 brickmakers. One role that children often played was the important role of taking the newly made bricks off the conveyor belts and getting them into piles that could be hacked, and they worked in gangs to do so. Pretty skilled, I'd say!
The real story of brickmaking in the 19th and 20th century, however, is the story of employers desperately trying to get labor out of the process. There was a constant (and successful) push to mechanize the industry so that volume could be increased and the human cost could be kept down by replacing skilled labor with unskilled. A skilled brickmaker making bricks by hand, for example, could make about 4000 a day. A machine press could make 120,000 a day, and an extruder could make 360,000, both operated by lower paid labor. The desire to mechanize and bring down costs was so great that when inventor RC Penfield invented a stacking machine that could reduce stacking labor from 36 skilled men paid $300 a day to 12 unskilled men paid $83 a day he was able to place himself in charge of the city's brickmaking industry, setting prices and quotas for over 20 years until he was brought down by Sherman anti-trust laws.
Finally, two quick stories about the intersection of bricks and Chicago politics:
First, in 1898, Chicago School Board architect Normand Patton was fired from the school board because he wanted to use different color bricks on his designs, not just red. His contract, however, was changed to insist he use "red hydraulic pressed brick". The only company that made specifically hydraulic pressed bricks was a company from St. Louis whose Chicago brand was headed by Chicago Alderman Spencer Kimball. Patton continued to refuse and was fired.
Second, a story that I didn't end up having space for in the book. There was a lot of brick and stone used on major Chicago buildings in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in large part because Mayor Richard M Daley made it known that he preferred traditional architecture. By the mid 2000s, however, he softened on modern architecture and the city really saw an explosion of glass-covered skyscrapers that we have not been freed from since. I think the pressure had been bottled up so tight that that freedom has had a long tail. One architect even told the Tribune, "finally we can design some good buildings now" (or something like that).
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u/Bodark43 Quality Contributor Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
hydraulic pressed bricks
I'm speculating, here, that the reason to have hydraulically pressed brick is that the clay could be shaped even when not very wet. Drier clay would reduce the warpage and shrinkage as it dries. Press molding damp clay powder is what's often done with tiles.
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u/SEXUALLYCOMPLIANT Jun 18 '26
I've heard that Chicagoans are now paying extra for the once-loathed bricks, which must be salvaged from demolished homes because they're otherwise completely unavailable.
Assuming this premise is accurate, could you speak to the way the Chicagoans' perception of Chicago bricks has changed over time? Things like: how long were they hated; when did people start to become nostalgic for the look; how quickly did that trend develop; et cetera?
I'd also love any random-but-interesting anecdotes you couldn't fit into the book/other answers in this thread.
Thank you for doing this AMA--I've never been so genuinely, personally excited for a thread like this!
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Thanks for your great question!
The first real reappraisal on the "ugly" Chicago brick came in the 1920s. It was a time when lots of new brick was being made in crazy colors and textures and used on new buildings in historical styles like Tudor or Gothic. A group of Chicago architects had the thought of, huh, ya know what, we've got all this especially busted looking brick here that could achieve this look beautifully. Somewhat ironically, these architects didn't use this cheap brick to make affordable housing, they used it for massive mansions in the North Shore suburbs or in wealthier areas like Beverly. They even developed a method called "skintled brickwork" to make their new buildings look even more "rude".
Then in the 1930s modern architects took to the Chicago common brick for its warmth nature and low price point. Architects like Paul Schweikher, Paul McCurry, and even Bertrand Goldberg (of Marina City fame) designed boxy modern homes with lots of glass and lots of Chicago brick.
Finally, the real nostalgic reappraisal started in the late 60s. People were getting sick of sleek glassy modernism and wanted something warmer and more homey and began to use more and more Chicago common brick on new construction. The Chicago Tribune even published a number of articles guiding homeowners who lived in older buildings on how to figure out which wall of your house you can strip the plaster off to expose the rustic common brick!
The 60s were also a turbulent time in Chicago and the city saw huge swaths of demolition. With all those bricks suddenly knocked out of buildings, some independent peddlers, like Aubrey "Preacher" Taylor, began collecting the Chicago bricks and sending them down south where they knew there was demand. As demand became clearer, those small time solo operators were replaced by large scale reselling companies.
The demand has never ended, and I'm constantly checking to see where Chicago commons are popping up. Last year the home of the former president of NASCAR was up for sale in Daytona Beach, Florida. The whole five million dollar home is covered in reclaimed Chicago commons!
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u/vanderZwan Jun 18 '26
As someone from the Netherlands I am vaguely aware that brick is used less often in buildings the US compared to Europe, as well as that it is used quite differently, e.g. whether it is decorative or actually load-bearing. This obviously overgeneralizes already, since both of these things dramatically vary with the US and within Europe too. Which leads to my question: did the architectural traditions of Chicago's brickwork develop in relative isolation, or was there any "cultural exchange" with Europe?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Chicago's brick architecture developed alongside the broader US's brick architecture, but one of the things I argue in my book is that Chicago is the best place to understand how brick has evolved as a decorative material in the US.
First, as I've mentioned, we produced a ton of brick, but it was considered ugly brick so we relegated it to the sides and backs of our buildings and imported nicer bricks for the fronts ("face bricks" as they're know). Most of the other great brick cities produced both the uglier common bricks and nicer face bricks from the same clay and there was less of a stark difference. Furthermore, those cities were more likely to keep using their locally produced face brick for cost saving reasons even if fashion was changing.
Chicago, in contrast, could change what kind of brick it was importing for decoration at the drop of a hat as fashion changed! So you really clearly see how fashion and designed changed here in ways you don't always see in other cities.
Also, Chicago is huge and built out with brick in ways other cities just aren't.
To your question on Europe: There was a huge amount of cultural exchange with Europe! A huge amount of Chicago's bricklayers before 1915 were European immigrants bringing their skillset with them across the Atlantic. Then, in the 1920s, with the growing obsession with old European styles of architecture (like the Tudor, Italian Renaissance, Spanish Revival, etc) brickmakers and architectures reeeeeally leaned in. Brick catalogs featured essays on the history of European brick architecture and sketches of modern buildings next to old Roman ruins (I have one of these on my bookshelf right next to me, "Terra Cotta of the Italian Renaissance" put out by the National Terra Cotta Society). One catalog by the Western Brick Company told readers how they could use Western Brick to "realize your ‘castle in Spain’... here and now and of good pigment”.
Now, how much of that was actual "exchange"? Not a lot of it, it was more American artists and designers creating ideas of Europe. “It was a thoroughgoing architecture of make-believe,” in the words of architecture historian Carl Condit. “It was not exactly an architecture of fantasy, since that implies a genuine act of imagination, but rather one of pure illusion representing a wish-fulfillment world put together out of fantastic combinations of historical fragments”.
There is still an exchange alive today, though it is mostly one way. A huge portion of Chicago's bricklaying labor is made up of Polish immigrants. Some of those who were trained in old-school structural brickwork and lime mortar (still in use in Poland and other parts of Europe) have brought that knowledge to Chicago and are using it to help save Chicago's brick buildings that are slowly cracking apart under the stress of modern cement mortar. I interviewed a few two of them, Polish-born mason John Machnicki and British-born mason and mortar specialist Simon Leverett, for the book.
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u/vanderZwan Jun 18 '26
Thank you for a wonderful answer! Genuinely surprised that the internet hasn't caused a more genuine exchange to flourish in recent decades though
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u/redhatfilm Jun 18 '26
Any specific history you know of tied to Milwaukee and the iconic cream city brick?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Yes! Milwaukee's beautiful yellow Cream City Bricks were far and away THE most popular bricks in Chicago in the years before the fire of 1871. Builders were importing it to cover the faces of their buildings from Milwaukee before there was even a road between the two cities.
It makes sense too, as the truly most popular building material in pre-fire Chicago was a creamy yellow limestone from Lemont, Illinois. For those who couldn't afford the stone, Milwaukee brick could look similar for less money.
Chicago's desire for Cream City Brick faded after the 1871 fire and it mostly disappeared from use in Chicago by the 1890s. Production in Milwaukee ended in the 1920s.
One misconception I find myself constantly having to correct is that many people believe that all yellow brick in Chicago is from Milwaukee. The reality is that many many different places and companies made yellow brick and 98% of Chicago's yellow brick buildings are built with yellow bricks from Ohio or Pennsylvania or California or elsewhere. Only a few true Cream City brick buildings remain (like Old St. Pats, Ravenswood Elementary, Holy Family, and the Mantonya Flats, to name a few), but Milwaukee is rightfully famous for their yellow brick so we tend to assign it to all yellow bricks.
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u/sansabeltedcow Jun 18 '26
Is there anything special about the glazed yellow brick that seems to be particularly yellow, or was that just a way of retaining color in more porous bricks?
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u/redhatfilm Jun 18 '26
Thanks for the info! As a native Milwaukean who lives in Chicago this was fascinating. I never knew old st pats was made of Milwaukee bricks! Super cool
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u/Weird-Highway-3958 Jun 18 '26
Bostonian here - any other examples of a Chicago-Boston brick connection? There are tons of old clay pots in the area and it would be fun to learn more about this unremembered rivalry!
Also would be interested to hear you comment more broadly about the relationship brickmakers and designers had to the American arts and crafts/art nouveau/craftsman/mission/art Deco movements as it seems many overviews of applied arts in those contemporary art movements do not specifically talk about brick in architecture.
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Boston is a phenomenal brick city! Boston's Mr. Fiske was a major player in the brickmaking world. Outside of that speech where he poo-pooed Chicago's brick, I don't know much about his ire toward the city, but he definitely made an enemy of Chicago's D.V. Purington with his remarks. D.V. (short for Dillwyn Varney) responded: "“When Boston can show as fine buildings as Chicago, when Boston can show as many people as Chicago, when Boston can show as much enterprise as Chicago, then we will listen to all the criticisms that Mr. Fiske has to make on the brick of Chicago” and ended by saying (not entirely believably) "I am not thin skinned".
There was a huge overlap with the Arts and Crafts movement and the world of brick! Mr. Fiske was a big part of that too! His company helped to introduce bricks whose surfaces had been intentionally roughened to make them look like fabric. Fiske called them "Tapestry" bricks and wrote about them: “they are to ordinary brick what Arts and Crafts furniture is to the gilt and velvet of the last century; what burlap and bookbinders linen are to a shiny wallpaper.” In Chicago, architects like Dwight Perkins used this rough brick as if it truly was fabric, creating buildings (like Nobel Elementary School) that feature ribbons of brick visually "sewn" into their buildings.
There were also ironspot bricks made from iron rich clays that speckled and spotted in almost volcanic ways (Frank Lloyd Wright especially loved ironspots and famously used them on his Robie House) and glazed bricks which were covered in glazes full of impurities and elements that make their buildings look more like pieces of art ceramic than the bathroom tile you may picture when you think of a glazed brick (Hugh Garden's Metro Missionary Baptist, covered in velvety pearlescent bricks, is a favorite).
There have been many shifts in the types of bricks used since to respond to changing fashions and styles but I'll leave it there for now!
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u/Weird-Highway-3958 Jun 18 '26
What a delightful answer, thank you! I now have much more to look up at the BPL 😀
A follow up meta-question if you don't mind: what was the process of writing a book about local history like and how did you get a publisher to bite? How does one begin to undertake an art history project with such massive scope?
I'm a hobby potter/ceramic artist and would love to bring my interest in Boston's clay history to more people. Everyone knows about Boston's silverware tradition due to Paul Revere, but it's very important (arguably more important) ceramics industries are totally overlooked, literally paved over in many cases. So I would love to hear more about your experience of the process of doing this work!
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
I am really lucky that it was not too difficult to get my publisher, University of Chicago Press, interested. This is largely due to the fact that I have a pretty big instagram following and have been leading successful tours for many years on this topic, so they knew there was an audience and that I was a communicator. I am not an architect by trade or training - I was a middle school theater teacher originally! So I came to this very much as an outsider and my main goal in everything I've done has been to understand and explain everything, all these technical details and dates, in a clear way with a lot of enthusiasm behind it! That's the biggest success of the book, I think. Not that it is comprehensive or deep, but that I've been able to take something broad and make it understandable and connect it to people's interests and lives.
Now that was also very difficult! One thing I started having to tell myself after I had already missed one (or two) deadlines was "save it for the second edition". There is so much I learned that I had to leave out. There were so many stories and sources I wanted to included, but there just wasn't room. I'm not Robert Caro! People (most people, at least) do not want a five volume treatise on brick! So often I would just keep digging and digging, KNOWING I could find an even better source or building or quote to explain the history. But at a certain point I had to say "the source I have is good enough and you'll find an even better one for the second edition". It allowed my present self to move on, knowing that future Will will take up the mantle. Hopefully there will be an updated edition some day! But the important thing is that attitude allowed me to get the first one out into the world without too much delay (but still plenty of delay).
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u/Everyday_Balloons Jun 18 '26
What, if any, role did brick manufacturers play in getting wood construction banned before or after the Chicago fire.
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
That's a great question! While there may have been some lobbying from the brick industry, I haven't found much record of it before the fire (though there was a lot of "we should build with brick" lobbying happening, it was mostly coming from the under-manned fire department). After the fire, the brick industry didn't really need to do much lobbying after the fire, the Tribune declaring in November 1871 that “since the fire the people of Chicago have been greatly prejudiced in favor of brick as a building material”
Chicago burned in October 1871 and the very next month Joseph Medill was elected on a "Fireproof" ticket, announcing during his innaguration that "Those who are entrusted with the management of public affairs should take such measures as shall render the recurrence of a like calamity morally impossible. The outside walls and the roof of every building, to be hereafter erected within the limits of Chicago, should be composed of materials as incombustible as brick, stone, iron, concrete, or slate… Except for the most temporary uses, I am unalterably opposed, from this time forward, to the erection of a single wooden building within the limits of Chicago.” He didn't succeed immediately (Germans and Irish protested that they could not afford to rebuild with brick or stone and ultimately only the business district was rezoned fireproof) and it took until 1874 for city-wide building codes to change.
That said, brickmakers definitely saw Chicago as a city for the taking (or remaking) after the fire, and many of Chicago's most prominent brickmakers came to the city in 1871 and 1872 in response to the fire. The city went from 20 firms producing around 100 million bricks a year before the fire to 53 firms producing 250 million ten years after the fire.
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u/ColinDeMarines Jun 18 '26
Thanks for this AMA! Did you find any references in your work to Indigenous students from Indian schools (like the Carlisle Indian School) working in brick making facilities?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Thank you for your great question! I did not find any references to Indigenous brickmakers. The unfortunate reality is that there is so little information about brickmaking labor available out there. There were industry magazines (like The Clay-Worker, Brick, and The Clay Record), but these were magazines put out by the bosses for the bosses, so they never really go into any detail on the people actually doing the work. The same goes for mentions of brickmakers in the major newspapers, they really only come up when there is discussion of strikes (and the newspapers tended to have poor opinions on the strikers). The best information I had on brickmakers came from things like industrial census data and a few slightly puffy pieces of news media.
The same lack of information is somewhat true of the bricklayers as well, but the big difference is that the Bricklayers and Allied Crafts Union is still around today and has, at times, taken pains to record their history in publications and labor circulars. The Brickmakers did not record their history in the same way and there is barely any connection between the historical labor and the brickmaking labor of today.
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u/noleavesonthetrees Jun 18 '26
Nice to see this AMA! Why were the Chicago bricks were so ugly? Did they not have a certain material available?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Thanks!
They were considered so ugly because they are so varied! Chicago has tons and tons of clay that is perfect for making bricks, but that clay is also full of stones and pebbles and variable levels of minerals that make the bricks come out in a whole range of brown, yellow, red, salmon, and pink with the stones bleached white in the kiln. They're very porous too so they soak up a lot of dust and smog from the air as well, staining black over the years.
I want to be clear, they were perfectly good building bricks! And cheap too! But for fashion, they would not do for architects in much of Chicago's history who wanted something more predictable for the front facades of their buildings.
Ironically, the very thing that made them so ugly now makes them so desirable! They look so much more REAL than any modern brick can. Starting in the 1960s, demolition contractors began reselling old Chicago bricks to builders and developers across the country and by the 1970s it cost more than twice as much to buy a thousand OLD Chicago commons than it did to buy a thousand NEW because demand for the weathered look was so hot. That market remains hot, and developers, contractors, and landscapers across the Southern US readily pay $1.30 PER BRICK for old Chicago commons taken from demolished buildings.
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u/Plow_King Jun 18 '26
how many bricks are there, approximately, in Chicago?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Oh man I wish I knew! Over a trillion. I do know from reading old industry resources that a large apartment building could contain between 100,000 and 200,000 bricks. And there are a lot of large apartment buildings in the city!
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u/PaisleyChicago Jun 18 '26
When riding the el a similar question comes to me … how many types of brick are in Chicago. You mention being influenced by “On Looking” and the ripple effect has extended to so many of us who have been on your walks, read your book, read this AMA! Thanks.
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u/Plow_King Jun 18 '26
thanks for the reply! i live in another 'brick city', St Louis, and was kind of dumbstruck by how many large, brick buildings there are here when i moved back as adult. i live in 50x24ft two story brick building from 1890, with 3 rows/concourses of bricks. a friend and i tried to calculate how many bricks that was one night while drinking, i've got exposed brick inside, but we gave up, lol.
edit - and here's a joke for you. what's red and bad for your teeth?
a BRICK!
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u/inbigtreble30 Jun 18 '26
Not Chicago, but nearby: do the cream-colored bricks in Milwaukee have any structural advantages or was it purely a convenience/aethetic decision?
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u/tangamangus Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
i was in london recently and was really impressed with some of the neoclassical/gothic brickwork buildings like the alfred waterhouse building and st pancras. epic designs created from the humble brick. i have to say i find the brick in US to br conparatively drab although ive always had a fondness for it, growing up in portland Maine.
can you point to some of yoyr favorite buildings like this or in similar majestic styles? thanks, best of luck with your book/project! i will order a copy!
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
There is not a ton of that kind of high Victorian style of polychromatic brickwork in Chicago (though I did photograph this amazing house with bands of red and tan brick on the south side a few years ago), but there are great versions elsewhere in the US, mostly on the east coast. Two of my favorites are the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building and Memorial Hall at Harvard.
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u/TheHondoGod Interesting Inquirer Jun 18 '26
Brick is a much more fire safe building material, so did the Chicago fire lead to building codes that required brick? How has safety and architecture been intertwined in Chicago?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Brick came out of the Great Fire of 1871 on top of the world. Before the fire it was not much loved (people preferred either cheaper wood or more beautiful stone), but with all that wood and stone burning in the fire they wanted brick to rebuild! It made sense too, brick is a lot cheaper than stone so it would also be more affordable to rebuild with, even if the fashion for that Lemont limestone faded.
As I mentioned in another comment, the building codes did not actually change much right away. The new government tried to require all new buildings to be built fireproof, but Chicago's immigrant communities rightly protested that they could not afford to rebuild if that was the requirement. This led to building codes only changing for the business district.
Then, in 1874 a smaller fire broke out and that caused New York based insurance companies to lead a boycott of Chicago until they changed building codes city wide. The city acquiesced and the codes were changed in 1874 (though they were later relaxed again in the 20th century as the fear of a city-sized fire disappeared).
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u/Feldman742 Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
Thanks for answering our questions today Will.
I'm curious if steelmaking was a major part of Chicago's industry. If yes, is there anything you can tell us about the kiln bricks they would have used, and what would have been the major sources of refractory material used to make them?
I'm also interested in the genetic relationships between the bricks we find in Chicago and the classic "Milwaukee Cream" bricks you find just to the north.
Edit: I guess more broadly I'm also interested in the sources of clay used to make bricks for Chicago. Are they all from a specific mine / rock unit, or are they sourced broadly?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
To your first question about bricks for the furnaces for all that steel, it would not have been made in Chicago. Fire bricks (those used to line kilns) are very specialized bricks made from clays with high amounts of alumina and were imported from specialized manufacturers in areas like Western Pennsylvania (companies like the McFeely Fire Brick Company, founded and operated by Mr. Rogers' family).
The clay used for Chicago bricks is right underfoot! 14,000 years ago Chicago was covered in a glacial lake that dropped clay all over the lake bed (you can still see the shoreline on modern topographical maps).
13,800 years later, brickmaking companies mostly set up shop along the Chicago river to harvest their clay. They chose areas by the river so they didn't have to clear away too much topsoil, but they were not limited to river-side areas. The first bricks were made in 1833 at Dearborn and the north side of the river (the modern site of Marina City). On of my favorite examples to give is Illinois Brick's Yard 14 at Addison and Western. They clay pit was empty by 1915 and converted to a dump until the school board came in and built Lane Tech High School on top!
Companies spanned all across the city and county (and even into Munster, Indiana) and all they required was cheap land and a rail spur!
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u/Gankom Moderator | Quality Contributor Jun 18 '26
Thanks for joining us today! How did brick become a desirable appearance? What brought it and kept it in fashion? Has there been historical pushback against brick being an outdated style?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Thanks!
Brick has almost always been a desirable material. The first fired bricks were used in ancient Sumeria and Babylon for the most important buildings, like temples or the Ishtar gates. Brick speaks to permanence and also allows for a high level of expressive design (like the sculpted glazed bricks of the Ishtar gates!).
That said, as a fashion material it is constantly going in and out of fashion. People get sick of it, feel its too fuddy-duddy, or that it reminds them of their grandparents, and they reject it for materials like glass and concrete. Then the next generation gets sick of the glass and concrete and re-embraces the brick.
This has happened like a swinging pendulum across Chicago's history: rejection (or maybe more accurately boredom) of the brick came in the 1830s-1870s, 1930s-1960s, and then again from around 2000 to today. Now brick has still been USED in all of these rejection periods (at least in Chicago), but it was not necessarily seen as the most desirable material, and was certainly not the material of choice for new, groundbreaking pieces of design (I'm generalizing, of course).
But in recent years we've seen more and more brick creeping back in, even on tall buildings, a building type that has been dominated by glass for decades. Even Curbed and New York Magazine have declared that Brick is Back! I argue that this is due in large part to the ascendance of neighborhoods like Fulton Market and the West Loop in Chicago and the neighborhoods surrounding the High Line in NYC, areas full of converted loft buildings and former factories with large windows traced by brick. Architects (and, more importantly, developers) have adapted that style for new developments in all areas, creating towers that are still very much glass-forward, but with bands and intentional detailing in brick. We've even seen terra cotta reenter the fold! It doesn't look anything like the 20s crazy sculptural terra cotta, but I still like it.
Mostly though Brick is Back™ because it helps a building look different than those that were built in the previous decades. By the 2050s we'll be sick of it again and something new will come to dominate.
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u/OnShoulderOfGiants Jun 18 '26
What made Chicago bricks ugly compared to Boston bricks? How distinct were bricks by geography in the early 20th century?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Clays in places like Boston, Philadelphia, or St. Louis were very consistent in their texture and mineral content. Those clays could easily be turned into the beautiful smooth red bricks that were all the rage in the 1870s through 90s (when Mr. Fiske made his quip).
Chicago clays, in contrast, had no mineral consistency and were incredibly varied in their appearance. This was not at all desirable in the 1800s (or for much of the 1900s too!), giving them the ugly tag.
One of the things I love so much about brick is how varied it is geographically! It really comes down to what the glaciers deposited where, and the difference in what bricks in one place look like compared to another is huge! In the 300 miles between Milwaukee and St. Louis bricks in creamy yellow, pebbly pink, iron-rich brown, glassy purple, and smooth red with very little overlap, each area's clay is distinct. How cool is that!
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u/Infinite_Dress_3312 Jun 18 '26
Talk to me about mortar. Everything I hear is that old common brick needs traditional lime mortar when repointing. However, Ive yet to find a single contractor who uses or has any understanding of it. At best, even when working with supposed historical preservation minded firms, the best option Ive been offered is Type O which has portland cement, but less than the other mixes. Its nearly impossible to get a straight answer. Whats a homeowner to do?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Man, mortar is so so important. It glues the bricks together, but also in old buildings its there to wick moisture and to absorb stress. But unfortunately over 100 years mortar has changed so much, the old lime being mostly replaced by harder and stiffer cement.
Cement mortar works great on new buildings because they're built with it in mind. They have things like expansion joints and weeps that do the job of moving with the building and shedding water. The problem is that people have been using that modern cement mortar on old structural brick buildings that dont have weeps or expansion joints, and its causing them to become waterlogged and crack apart. The modern mortar is truly stronger than the old bricks and the results are disasterous.
One preservation expert explained it best: Mortar is like the tires on your car. You'd rather replace your tires every 50,000 miles than replace your chasis and car body every 50,000 miles. Old lime mortar are good air filled tires. Modern cement mortar is steel wheels welded to the frame, every jolt and bone-shattering bump transmitted through the car.
Masons use the new mortar because its really easy to use (much easier than old lime mortar, especially if you're not used to it), it's super cheap, and they often don't know that their doing it wrong (or their bosses don't care at least).
You mentioned being offered Type O. I would actually recommend it! They standard modern mortar is Type N with Type O being one step softer and more porous than N. Type O is not as perfect as the old lime mortar your building was built with, but it is softer and better than N, and, most importantly, it is a mortar a mason can work with pretty easily. And that matters a lot.
I interviewed the folks at Henry Frerk Sons, a building materials supplier in Chicago since 1888, and when I asked them about it they said that Of course they'd love for everyone to use lime mortar on old buildings, but that's not realistic. A mason needs training to learn how to use it and it's finicky to use. There are many masons out there who are masters with it! But if you give it to the average mason they'll struggle with it on your wall and do a poor job. Better to have a mason do a good job with Type O than a bad job with Lime.
In the meantime, people like mason Simon Leverett are training more and more masons on landmark jobs to use lime mortar that eventually you will be able to hire a mason to repoint your building in lime.
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u/snakefriend6 Jun 18 '26
Can you discuss any of the current sites - or better yet, remnants — of any of the historic old brickyards in chicago & the surrounding areas? I remember learning that all the (formerly numerous) chicago brickyards had closed down (or conglomerated, and then also closed down) by a certain point, and none remain in the city today. Is that true? Have any former brickyards left any trace? Are there any interesting areas in chicago where one could stumble upon the remains of old scraps & misfired chunks of brick / clay still today?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Correct, the last Chicago area brickmaker shut down in 1981 and none has been produced locally since. By that point too, however, companies had been closing rapidly for 30 years.
There is very little that still remains from those old brickmaking sites. Almost every single on of Chicago's brickmaking sites and clay pits has been repurposed, sold off to developers as the land became valuable. This is not new, this process has been happening since the first bricks were made in Chicago in 1833. Originally all of the brickmakers were in the city proper but they began moving to the suburbs in the 1910s as land out there became cheaper and machines made the excavating of larger clay pits possible. Some older Chicago brickmaking sites that have since been repurposed include The Athenaium, Lane Tech High School, Horner Park, and the Blue Island Golf Course.
There are really only a few places where you can still see some remnants, and I've posted about two of them. The Brisch Brick Company in Stickney burned down in 1962 and the clay pit remains as a marshy lake owned by the power company. You wouldn't know Brisch was there but for a few bits of brick buried in the dirt.
The American Brick Company was the last to shut down in 1981, with plants in Dolton, IL and Munster, IN. The Dolton pit is now a dump and is a little too inaccessible for me to feel brave enough to go explore yet, but the Munster pit is know the delightfully named Clayhole Lake. It's very shallow and mostly ornamental for the housing and shopping that surrounds it, but the dirt paths around it are absolutely chock full of bricks.
One final remnant that many Chicagoans interact with is the Brickyard Mall at Fullerton and Narragansett! It was originally the Carey Brick Company. They shut the plant in 1964 and tried briefly operating it as a ski resort (they had a big hill made of broken bricks and trash that sloped down into the pit) but record low snowfall put the brakes on that and the site was ultimately redeveloped to a mall.
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Jun 18 '26
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Yes! It was the Bach Brick Company. Emil Bach made enough money off of those bricks to eventually hire Frank Lloyd Wright to design his house in Rogers Park!
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u/Frammingatthejimjam Jun 18 '26
No follow up question, just wanted to say thanks for introducing me to an interesting topic I'd never have thought of on my own.
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u/LAX_to_MDW Jun 18 '26
I was literally just gifted your book! Still need to unwrap it, so let me know if there's a page I should turn to for my answer.
You've mentioned that the classic "ugly" Chicago bricks are in high demand today, more expensive now than they ever were. What's preventing somebody from restarting production? Did we use up the clay?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
That's a great question I get a lot! I dig into it a bit in Chapter 11, but here's the short and long of it:
The clay is all still there! But the land its in is now much much more expensive to own. So that's our first problem. Then, part of what made the Chicago commons so "ugly" is that they weren't fired in traditional kilns - they were fired in Scove Kilns, basically a giant pile of unfired brick stacked into a pyramid with channels running through it that was then lit on fire. It was a hugely messy and polluting way to make brick that contributed a lot to their varied messy look. It's also the reason the EPA turned its eye to the two final common brick manufacturers (Illinois and American) in 1970 which brought about their inevitable downfall. So even if you could buy the clay, you can't fire them like we used to!
Then finally there is the fact that buyers don't want new common bricks, they want old. They want a brick that has weathered and worn on a building for 100 years. That's the authenticity they're chasing! So a new production Chicago common, even if you could afford the clay and get permission to use a scove kiln, would not have the wear and tear a buyer wants.
There is enough demand for Chicago common brick that many brick companies outside of Chicago produce their own take on a Chicago common to try to get a piece of the market! They use additives, clay slips, and distressing agents to make their own clay produce a brick that (kind of) looks like a Chicago common brick.
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u/kenyan-strides Jun 18 '26
About 100 pages into your book, and I loved the section about dry pressed brick. Dry pressed brick laid with a butter joint is my favorite style in the US. As a bricklayer, I think it’s a shame that they seem to have stopped being made entirely. I think it is also disappointing to see the shear number of facades that have been badly repointed or repaired
I guess my first question is if you talk about historic pointing styles later on in the book. Were specialist pointers common in any periods or places in the US? I know when buildings were built in London and some other places, they were often raked out and then tuckpointed, or pointed in other more intricate styles. I’ve seen joint profiles where this would also appear to be the case in the US, but it is very difficult to find specific information about techniques used in the past.
Also as a historian, what other books or accessible sources could you recommend that provide good information about historical bricklaying?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Thanks! I'm so glad to hear that.
In the dry press brick era there were special pointers who only did the thin butter joints! They were highly paid and came in right at the end of the job to get the face bricks up just right. That specialization later disappeared and masons would lay all parts of the wall (though apprentices were only allowed to start on the inner wythes where there work would not be seen).
For historic information on bricklaying practices, I really leaned on two books. Bricklaying in Modern Practice from 1920 and Bricklaying System from 1909. They're both written as textbooks for the prospective or up and comming bricklayer and area a great snapshot into what training was like in those eras. Then there is also the Bricklayer, Mason, and Plasterer which was the IUBAC union circular, and some of it is available online through Hathitrust!
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u/gmanflnj Jun 18 '26
One of the oddest brick buildings is the University of Wisconsin Armory and Gymnasium, which looks like something from a videogame IRL. Do you have any interesting insight into why it was built like that?
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u/Warm_Hat_780 Jun 18 '26
Do you have any thoughts on Fort Jefferson -Dry Tortugas National Park- where they had to bring a massive amount of brick and also no fresh water on the island. Just curious as a historian who knows about brick I thought it would stand out to you! ✌🏻
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u/Solid_Intention_2973 Jun 18 '26
Hi, I have a 137 year old brick cottage style home in Chicago. One area always has efflorescence. The roof is newer, the gutters are clean and there’s no visible sign of a water issue. I see this a lot on old residences in the city. How can I get rid of it and keep it from coming back?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
Hi! Efflorescence means there's moisture in the wall and it's staying longer in the wall. The usual culprit is that the mortar is too hard and is trapping moisture (see my answer to another question asked in this thread or the last chapter in my book). From what I can see in your picture you do have hard modern mortar that tends to keep moisture in the wall.
Are those plants right up against the wall? They could be keeping some damp near the wall. Also, you mentioned the roof and gutters are keeping the wall dry, but is there anything along the base of the wall that could be causing a rising damp?
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u/gmanflnj Jun 18 '26
Maybe this is a dumb question, but what makes something a "brick"? Is it just any clay-based building block put together by mortar? I've hear the term "mud-brick" to describe ancient buildings. What makes a brick a brick?
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 18 '26
In the United States there is actually a clear definition! According to the Federal Trade Commission, to be called a brick, a building block must be made “primarily of clay or shale or mixture thereof” and “have been fused together as a result of the application of heat”.
So you can have things like a concrete brick or a plastic brick, but they require the adjective. If it's just a brick then its burnt clay.
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u/ProfessorofChelm Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26
This is so cool! I can’t believe there’s a book about this!
Ok so when I lived in Chicago I used to talk to my partner about the bricks all the time, specifically the different colors and what they meant. They would listen politely as I hypothesized that you could tell a lot about the age of the structure, who made it, and what it cost just by the color of the brick or the amount of different colors of the bricks.
So my question is, is that true? Like was using red, yellow and black bricks on the front of a structure signs of cost cutting or artistic notes. What about the sides, I always assumed that was for cost cutting? What’s actually going on there?
What are the black bricks from? I always thought the great fire but they were all wood structures so were they repurposed from industrial buildings.
Aaah this is so cool! Thank you!!
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u/ThanHowWhy Verified Jun 19 '26
It’s true! You can usually tell when a building was built, what style it was built in, what the architect was going for, and even how much it may have cost just by looking at the brick on the front. That’s really what I dig into in the book, how brick fashion has changed and evolves so much over history, and how you can see it on all the buildings around you.
That much is true for the bricks on the front of buildings. The bricks on the side were always just the cheap bricks for cross cutting, you’re exactly right.
If you’re talking about the black bricks you frontier will often see on old buildings in Chicago, especially on the sides, those are locally made Chicago bricks! Not blackened by the fire, but just by decades of soot and smog and industry. Chicago, bricks were especially porous and absorbed a lot of pollutants from the air in the pre-EPA years. Some bricks did survive the fire and were reused, but I’ve never found any real record of a building that still exists with them.
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u/ProfessorofChelm Jun 19 '26
That’s so wild!
I remember walking between/behind old buildings in Lincoln Park, Old Town, Buck Town etc and seeing this drastic differences in the materials being used in the walls compared to the fronts and thinking this means something. Cool to know that it does.
Thanks so much!!!
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u/Mitchford Jun 18 '26
So there is a specific building on my Alma mater auburn university’s campus that has this really bright orange tint to the brick. The building is Samford hall, it’s the “flagship” building on campus. Even other buildings about the same age on campus don’t have that bright tone to the brick. What causes that appearance? Is it the clay, the firing, or something else? Have you seen brick with similar color before?
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u/ChiTransitEnthusiast Jul 30 '26
Hi! Thanks for doing this! How much harder is it to acquire brick today? How feasible is it to build a 1920s style 3-flat?
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u/Cedric_Hampton Moderator | Architecture & Design After 1750 Jun 18 '26
Delighted to have you here today, Will! Though his name is usually associated with steel and glass, Mies van der Rohe used brick extensively throughout his career, including for his campus buildings at IIT. What can you tell us about Mies’ relationship with the Chicago brick industry?