Next time you walk around Lafayette Square, have a look at some of the brickscape. You’ll see many St. Louis companies represented in its paving bricks.
Then consider the houses’ exterior walls – today’s facing brick is an aesthetic compromise designed to lend a historic look, rather than supportive strength. Our early buildings were brickfests by comparison. The cross-section pictured below (from 2020) was of a decrepit building corner at the foot of 18th at Chouteau. Brick is solid stuff, and its sheer volume in use is a testament to the affordability of something locally mass-produced.
Bricks on the go
Beyond St. Louis, when you touch an early 20th-century red brick building in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, or Dallas you may again be close to the clay once beneath St. Louis. Bricks produced here shipped by rail everywhere. The strength and distinctive terracotta hue of St Louis brick made it a ubiquitous material for prestigious civic construction.
The export of St. Louis brick is sometimes involuntary. St. Louis City in 2017 had nearly 25,000 vacant or abandoned properties.¹ As the city loses population and other cities grow and thrive, a black market craves high quality low-cost brick. This is often wrested from abandoned buildings in the city. Turn of the century housing falls victim to wholesale “brick rustling” in North St. Louis.
A nasty cottage industry
Setting fire to an isolated structure is one ploy to ease the task of brick thievery. When the fire department battles the blaze, cold water hits hot walls, popping brick mortar and making the whole structure prone to collapse. Later, a cable strung between windows and tied to a truck pulls down the wall. Soon, the bricks may be heading down the interstate to Texas or Louisiana.
The loss of back walls from abandoned homes is prevalent on the north side. Enough so that the remains of such a structure are known locally as a “doll house”.
Lafayette Square has lost its fair share of significant brick structures. From left to right below, the Sheble/Bixby house, Nicholson estate and Barlow Mansion come to mind. While enjoying the old-time craftsmanship and solidity of our remaining original homes, an appreciation of brick is certainly integral to it.
The small miracle of preservation
The historic homes of the Square form a backdrop that gets into one’s bloodstream. If it’s not romantic, why do the wedding parties line up each year for their pictures in the park? Today it’s difficult to see the years of sustained effort expended in bringing the grand houses, and Lafayette Square itself, back from the brink of ruin. The city nearly wrote off this neighborhood in the late 1940s. A St. Louis Plan Commisson plat map labeled the area “Slum D”. The commission slated much of the area for destruction. This to make way for proposed state highway 755, the North-South Distributor. As close as it got after a contentious quarter century was the creation of Truman Parkway.
The area is magical, and its survival hung in the balance for decades. If it seems like a preservation miracle, I encourage you to take a pilgrimage there any time of year. And enjoy your look at all that brickwork!
Credits
I recommend this article for a deeper look at the importance of brick to St. Louis, and a good discussion of brick theft. It also makes reference to an excellent documentary, Brick – By Chance And Fortune. The Story of Brick in St. Louis, filmed by St. Louis’s own Bill Streeter. You can stream this 2011 feature from Amazon.
1.) Riverfront Times – January, 2018
99 Percent Invisible podcast – a truly worthwhile source of the unexpected in design and architecture. exchange.prx.org
Part one of this three part essay is here: http://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1849-like-a-ton-of-bricks-part-1/
Part two is here: http://lafayettesquarearchives.com/1872-like-a-ton-of-bricks-part-2/
A small smorgasbord of St. Louis paving and firebricks appears at the top of this website, or click here: https://lafayettesquarearchives.com/the-bricks-of-lafayette-square/