Column: Some solid stuff on the subject of bricks in the area
Published 12:00 am Friday, March 29, 2002
Sometimes I feel these columns serve as long footnotes for the topics I’ve already written about for the Tribune.
Friday, March 29, 2002
Sometimes I feel these columns serve as long footnotes for the topics I’ve already written about for the Tribune. That’s certainly true regarding the topic of Martin F. Rushfeldt, the man I called the &uot;King of the Brick Makers,&uot; who was featured in the March 10, 2002, issue of the Tribune’s Lifestyle section.
During the past few years I have been inspecting a multitude of bricks at various locations around Albert Lea, plus the Historical Village out at the fairgrounds. What I was looking for was just one engraved brick once made in Albert Lea by Rushfeldt, Morin, or one of the other local brick makers a century or more ago. So far, the results have been negative. All the locally made bricks seem to be just plain oblong squares.
Incident-ally, one place to still find bricks from somewhere else, both embossed and engraved, is in the narrow walkway between the American Legion building and the former City Hall on North Broadway Avenue. There are bricks with the brand names of Flint Co., Capital, and Purington Brick. As an added note, some of these bricks are plain on top and the brand names may be buried on the bottom sides.
I’ve also been looking around the city for the places where the brick and tile makers obtained their clay. After a century or more the traces of the old clay mines, pits or quarries are just about gone. However, it’s safe to say Rushfeldt, Morin and the other brick makers really altered the local terrain. There are places on the city’s south side which indicate some clay was once dug out of the ground. Also, I have a hunch some small knolls were smoothed out during the last part of the 19th century.
The photo I used with the Rushfeldt article may help to explain the present slight downward slope on Newton Avenue just to the south of East Fourth Street.
Here’s another point worth considering. The topsoil was certainly removed so the crews could get to the clay beds. This soil was likely piled up nearby, then moved back over the former pit areas to reclaim the land for residential use.
One detail I’ve been observing about the city’s many brick buildings is this. There are quite a few shades of colors for the bricks from dull gray to yellow and tan to lighter and darker versions of red.
In some very obvious situations bricks of different shades have been used on the same structure. For some of these structures this clearly indicates there has been a later addition. For other structures a lower grade of brick is used on three sides and a fancier type of brick is used for the front.
Then there’s the factor based on the painting of the exterior bricks on some structures. One local brick building, for example, is white. Several others were painted red (brick red) to hide the fact that two different shades of bricks were used, one for the original construction, and another for a later addition.
Now, which of the bricks on these buildings were made by the plants owned by Rushfeldt, Morin and the other local firms? This question can be answered two ways. First, the making of bricks in the Albert Lea area seems to have died out by 1911. Second this means structures erected after this date, with maybe an allowance of a few years more to clear out inventory stocks, used bricks imported from somewhere else.
I have a strong hunch that the locally made bricks were gray, yellow and tan colored, of sturdy construction grade, and not too fancy. And, according to what I found in an encyclopedia entry, &uot;Clays that are high in iron compounds make red brick. Clays with low iron content are used for yellow or cream-colored brick. Variations in color can be obtained with some clays by flashing the brick at the end of the burning (in the ovens or kilns). In flashing, the fires are made very smoky to make the iron in the clay darker.&uot;
Through the years clay bricks have been gradually replaced with cement and clay blocks, and even cement bricks.
Feature writer Ed Shannon’s column appears Fridays in the Tribune.