“Architecture starts when you carefully place two bricks together. There it begins.”
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
You build with what you have at hand. St Louis was geographically gifted for growth by sitting atop two dandy sources of construction materials – limestone and clay. As function also leads to fashion, you only have to stroll around Lafayette Square to witness the flights of imagination launched by architects working with bricks from fired clay.
The walls of a frame house left to nature will last about five years before beginning to fall apart. The walls of a brick structure can stand for a hundred. Old home preservationists get the benefit of a head start in St. Louis City. We often talk about an otherwise decrepit house as having “good bones”.
Manchester clay to St. Louis bricks
The area of Manchester Road that parallels the River Des Peres between Kingshighway and McCausland was a rich source of brick clay. Two miles wide and four miles long, a one to two foot seam of high quality clay ran east to west. This district was mined using shafts and slopes. Frequent blasting loosened the clay for easier removal. Brick factories developed as close as possible to the source of supply.. Called Cheltenham today, the area attracted Irish and Italian immigrants to work the deposits. In turn, clay mining and brick making helped establish both Dogtown and the Hill. These neighborhoods flanked the mines to the north and south. The mines operated from the 1850’s into the 1940’s.
“In 1849, the steamboat White Cloud caught fire and drifted into the riverfront wharves. A third of the city went up in the subsequent blaze. A hurriedly-passed local ordinance forbade the construction of wooden buildings, and St. Louis became even more predominantly brick.
Firebrick from St. Louis kilns proved suitable not only for buildings and streets, but also for sewer lines under the fast-growing metropolis. St. Louis truly was (and remains) a brick city.
Ready availability, low cost of production and transportation, and a friendly zoning ordinance combined to promote a distinct city architecture. Within this singular theme of brick exist striking variations.
Still a vibrant expression of the past
You won’t find such an array of styles within a single building material as you do with St. Louis City and brick. Pittsburgh and Baltimore might come close, but walk Benton Park, Downtown, Lacledes Landing, Soulard and Lafayette Square, then find another city like this. We take it for granted since it surrounds us like air and water – part of our urban environment.
On January 10th, 2018 Lara Hamdan, KWMU radio and Don Marsh presented an episode of the excellent St Louis On The Air series that discussed Evens-Howard Place, an area approximately where the Brentwood Prominade is today. It was a vibrant middle-class African American neighborhood collectively engaged in fire brick production.
In part two, a deeper dive into a specific and influential company with Lafayette Square roots; The Hydraulic Press Brick Company. Right here next week: lafayettesquarearchives.com/1872-like-a-ton-of-bricks-part-2/
Resources
(2) Rome of the West (Blog)
(3) Dotage St. Louis (Blog)
KWMU 90.7 FM Radio St. Louis
Thanks for the history lesson!
What a splendid building material…plentiful, cheap and able to be stacked in an infinite array of styles. And indestructible. When the tornadoes came through, it wasn’t the brick that failed. It was the mortar and the lumber.
Good point, Duke. It’s not the bones that go, it’s the joints, right? I read about single course brick fences in England that weave back and forth. The arch effect lends much more strength than a straight wall of one row of bricks would give. In fact, even though they undulate, they’re considerably cheaper than a multi-course linear wall. Oh, the rabbit holes.