St. Louis Archives - Lafayette Square Archives

1872: Like A Ton Of Bricks (Part 2)

To begin with..

*Detail of Letterhead Logo for Hydraulic Press Brick Company of St. Louis (1883)*

St. Louis is situated on some terrific ground with which to build a durable city. Limestone bluffs once lined the riverfront, and were quarried for facades and foundations. As mentioned in the preceding essay, a long deep seam of high grade clay ran under present day Manchester Road. There was coal galore, conveniently mined from the same area as the clay. Mold and fire the clay and you have a brick. Handy materials for an incredibly fast growing, if fire-prone city. Inexpensive and plentiful Italian and Irish immigrant labor kept production costs low. A terrible fire led to a city ordinance in 1849 mandating brick as the city’s construction material. Many such buildings have lasted over 150 years.

Edward Sterling (1834-1911) founded a bonafide brick-making empire, based in St. Louis. Early in his life, his uncle Elisha was managing a steam furnace company in Cleveland. Looking to diversify the business in the 1850’s, Elisha and his associate Ethan Rogers looked into the manufacture of bricks.

Until that time, brick production consisted of forming clay into molds by hand and then kiln-firing in batches. Now, late into the industrial revolution, underlying assumptions about labor and efficiency were challenged in almost every aspect of the economy.

Rogers invented and patented “a new and improved machine for molding and pressing brick by hydraulic pressure”¹. The first hydraulic brick machine was put into service in Cleveland in 1856. Three years later, that machine was sold to a manufacturer in Nashville, and eventually melted down for ordnance during the Civil War.

Now, about Edward Sterling

As a young man going his own way, Elisha’s nephew Edward unsuccessfully tried his hand at running a lumber company. He then returned to Cleveland and secured a financial interest in the patent rights for Rogers’s hydraulic dry brick press. Edward acquired a new press and in 1860 moved that 33-ton, cast iron machine to Memphis. In 1860, this press produced 8 million bricks in 11 months.

When the Civil War interrupted his production in Memphis, Sterling established a plant in St. Louis, He leased a brickyard near the southeast corner of Chouteau and Mississippi streets (in what is now Lafayette Square) and began manufacturing in late April 1865. With the luck of being in the right place at the right time, the following month brought the end of the Civil War, and began a long process of physical reconstruction.

Hydraulic gathers steam

The Sterlings family business soon attracted other investors, and Hydraulic Press Brick Company incorporated in 1868.

Edward Sterling became Hydraulic’s first president. The company took over the buildings, equipment and machinery in use at the plant on Chouteau and Mississippi. It also acquired an interest in the rights to three patents: the Rogers hydraulic press; a novel design for a brick kiln; and another design for an improved “perpetual kiln.” Hydraulic’s annual production in 1868 amounted to around 5 million bricks, and 7 million the following year. Sterling claimed this output was far less than the demand.

The quality of this brick – heavy, dense, and strong – proved itself in tests conducted by the government. The crush strength of a Hydraulic brick proved more than twice that of conventional handmade brick of the time. James Eads also performed tests and praised the solidity of Hydraulic brick. The product thus began selling itself. With both press and kiln patented, profits flowed to Sterling’s enterprise. Hydraulic product was used in the construction of Eads Bridge, the Bissell Point water treatment plant and Anheuser-Busch brewery. As word spread, it found use is both Chrysler and Manhattan Life buildings in New York.

By the end of 1872, the company had increased its throughput to nearly 18 million bricks a year. With 14 kilns and 2 brick presses, the plant could produce nearly 9,000 bricks per hour.

Getting the local bearings

It’s possible to locate both Sterling’s home and business on the 1875 Compton and Dry map of St. Louis. At that time he lived at the intersection of 14th and Chouteau Ave. His Hydraulic Press Brick Works had migrated down the road to Chouteau and Grand.

As the company yards followed excavation of the clay deposits, several moves west ensued. The works eventually resettled at Kingshighway, where it remained at the turn of the 20th century. Hydraulic Press Brick by then was churning out over 100 million bricks per year, It was, by then, the largest brick company on Earth.²

300 million per year. Note: H.W. Eliot – Secretary and eventually President of HBP Co. was poet T.S. Eliot’s father.

Epilogue

Edward retired from the business in 1905. Eight years earlier, he prepared a home to retire to, in Redlands, California. “La Casada” was a 22 room mansion of 8,000 square feet. Italian/Mission Revival in style, it featured extensive formal Italian gardens and seven landscaped terraces running down a hillside. Scenic America magazine in 1912 proclaimed this home to be “The most beautiful residence in all southern California”…

…with nary a brick in sight.

Thanks to research sources, including

(1) Mimi Stiritz – National Bldg Arts Center 2017. Much of this post is influenced by her work at http://web.nationalbuildingarts.org/collections/clay-products/ornamental-brick/hydraulic-brick-company-the-early-years/

(2) Mound City On the Mississippi. City of St Louis Planning and Urban Design Agency

Bob Corbett of Webster University did an extensive amount of research into mapping the proximity of coal and clay mines in the Dogtown area of St. Louis. It proves the point in this essay’s first paragraph. http://faculty.webster.edu/corbetre/dogtown/history/mines.html

Thanks also to Michael Allen and Chris Kallmyer “The Land and The Brick” http://www.chriskallmyer.com/works/commonfield-clay/commonfield-clay-interviews/land

Part one of this essay series on St. Louis brick appears here: lafayettesquarearchives.com/1849-like-a-ton-of-bricks-part-1/

1849: Like A Ton Of Bricks (Part 1)

“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.

*Sketch of fire brick works, pre-1904, from “The Clay Working Plants Of St Louis.” As early as 1839, St Louis brickyards were turning out in excess of 20 million bricks annually.*

“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.

In this detail from an 1874 Currier and Ives print, note the distinctive terracotta shade of the 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

(1) Urbanist Dispatch

(2) Rome of the West (Blog)

(3) Dotage St. Louis (Blog)

KWMU 90.7 FM Radio St. Louis

1870: The Bird That Decided To Stay

The Missouri Audubon Society lists 434 distinct species of birds in the state. Did you know that one had a range limited to Lafayette Park in 1870, and has migrated no farther than 150 miles in the 150 years since?