Brick Collecting?

Collecting old branded brick is a growing hobby. Some call it a crazy hobby, but to find, touch and own a piece of history can be very rewarding...and fun. This web site has several main sections:

Brickmaking History: How bricks were made; Inventions, Machines, Patents
Hudson River Brickmaking: The extent of the industry in New York and northern New Jersey, now with an interactive map version
Our Collection: Bricks from the Hudson River Valley and New England with brief notes on the history of the yards and towns where they were made
Links: Other web sites with fun and interesting information all about brick(s)
Brick Collections Around the World: From Russia to New Zealand to Japan, this is truly an international hobby

This web site focuses mainly on brick from the Hudson Valley of New York and New England. A great source for information on brick around the USA (and around the world) is the International Brick Collectors Association.

Also, of note is Dan Mosier's fine web site on California Bricks which has a great page on just what Collecting Bricks is all about.

Bricks were produced in many areas around the United States and Canada where craftsmen brought their skills from Europe to places that had the right type of clay suitable for brickmaking and good access to transportation.

HUTTON bricks along the Hudson River at Kingston Point Beach, July, 2006

One such area, the Hudson River Valley in New York State, with its abundance of clay and an excellent water link to New York City, churned out millions of bricks, mostly near the turn of the 20th century. In Haverstraw, in Rockland County, NY, there is the Haverstraw Brick Museum. In the 1880s there were over 40 brickyards in the Haverstraw area. Many buildings in New York City are made with bricks manufactured in Haverstraw. For more information on Hudson River Brickmaking, Click Here.

At one time, the state of Connecticut had more than 200 brickmaking companies. As a result of past glaciation periods, many clay deposits dot the state and many of these were exploited to make bricks. The history of brickmaking in the state is explored in a special section of the Connecticut Museum of Mining and Mineral Science.

From the National Building Museum's American Brick Collection:

National Building Museum

A variety of 19th and 20th century brick samples from the National Building Museum Collection, which contains more than 1,800 examples from brickyards around the country

Brick is one of the oldest and most enduring man-made building materials.Sun-dried mud brick, or adobe, appeared about 10,000 years ago, and the earliest kiln-fired or clay-baked brick dates to 3,500 BC. This marked the first time humans were able to construct permanent, fireproof structures without stone.

Since at least 1611, when English brickmakers were recruited to Virginia, fired brick has been part of the North American landscape. Indelibly tied to the colonial era, brick came to define the nation’s industrial age and remains linked to contemporary notions of the American factory, school, and single-family house.

Although once manufactured with incredible variety, brick production today is far more limited because the material is no longer used structurally, but rather as veneer.

A labor of love, the Museum’s extensive American Brick Collection was amassed by Raymond Chase over 24 years. The collection now holds some 1,800 decorative, face, fire, paving, pressed, and common bricks from around the nation. And unlike the country’s anonymous army of bricklayers, many of these late-19th and early 20th-century brick are branded with the name or location of their originating brickyard, or a distinguishing mark.

We often get asked where old bricks can be found. The best places are former brickyards, construction sites, abandoned building sites, demolition sites, dump sites, land-fill and beaches.

Just a few of the many bricks found by website visitor Jason in the Bronx, NY

Webmaster Note: We'd like to thank Jason for donating the bricks pictured above as well as the following. Note the range of towns up and down the Hudson and even in Connecticut where these bricks were made. Jason found them all in ruins of buildings in the Bronx.

M&LW Mordecai & Lucien Washburn Haverstraw (Grassy Point)
RMBCo Richard Murray Brick Co., Berlin, CT
J.C.M. John C. Maginnis, Glasco
L & O BB John Lynch, John & Mark OBrien Bros., George's Island
J.J.J. Juan Jacinto Jova, Newburgh
KLINE Jacob Kline, Port Ewen
DFJr&Co Denton Fowler Jr. & Co, Haverstraw
G&G Gladfelter & Gladfelter, Athens
TERRY BROS. Terry Brick Co.(David,Albert & Edwin), Kingston
MBC Mayone Brick Co., Athens
TBCo Troy Brick Co., Troy
W&F Uriah Washburn & Denton Fowler, Haverstraw
MALDEN Malden Brick Co., Malden
CBCo Champlain Brick Co., Mechanicville
MBW Malden Brick Works, Malden
AMERICAN American Brick Co., Berlin CT
TUTTLE Tuttle Brick Co., Middletown, CT
XXX George W. Washburn, Catskill
STAPLES Terry Staples, Malden

Pilgrim Psychological Hospital

Bricks found at demolition site, Pilgrim Psychiatric Center,
998 Crooked Hill Road, West Brentwood, NY, September, 2007

(Thanks to Bill from St. James, NY for tipping us off on this location!)

Bricks found in land-fill (site now closed), Milton, NY, January, 2007

For true brickophiles there's the International Brick Collectors Association. IBCA members don't buy bricks, they swap them. They collect all kinds of brick: building brick, paving brick, fire brick, as long as they are branded with names, designs, patterns, pictures, or numbers. A Hudson Valley I.B.C.A. BRICK SWAP took place in Haverstraw, NY the "Brickmaking Capitol of the World." Click Here for Photos