Brick

“ Fly-wheels could be built of oak and pine, and hooped with iron. Fly-wheels did not discourage us.
But brick? One brick is, say, sixty-four cubic inches only. This moon,—though we made it hollow,—see,—it must take twelve million brick.
The brick alone will cost sixty thousand dollars!
The brick alone would cost sixty thousand dollars. There the scheme of the Brick Moon hung, an airy vision, for seventeen years,—the years that changed us from young men into men. The brick alone, sixty thousand dollars! ”

“ Brick is a most valuable building material, wonderfully durable, as the remains of the old Roman buildings testify, and fire-proof, as often demonstrated. To the minds of many, brick suggests all the ugliness of the immense crop of buildings that has sprung up in our American cities—buildings with wondrous painted and sanded cornices and window caps, with a front pierced with regularly spaced square-headed openings. But the builder and not the material is at fault, for as countless European examples show us, brick can be used with most excellent effect. ”

“ Above this is what may be considered as an enormous frieze, which, as well as the cornice, is of brick. On one side is a fragment of a wall of alternate brick and tufo, not close against the wall of the temple, or parallel to it. The walls of the present building are all brick, at least as to the facing; and in converting it to a church, the spaces between the columns have been filled up with an ill-built wall of brick, and fragments of stone. The original brickwork is neat and good, but the bricks are not cut to a sharp edge, as they are in some other examples. ”

“ Another excellence in brick is its perfect air of English respectability. It is utterly impossible for an edifice altogether of brick to look affected or absurd: it may look rude, it may look vulgar, it may look disgusting, in a wrong place ”

“ Dimension stone, flint, rubble, burnt or unburnt brick,--use them as you find them. For it is not every neighbourhood or particular locality that can have a wall built of burnt brick like that at Babylon, where there was plenty of asphalt to take the place of lime and sand, and yet possibly each may be provided with materials of equal usefulness so that out of them a faultless wall may be built to last forever. ”

“ Every brick in the miles of viaducts or tunnels, houses, or public buildings, to which we have made allusion, was laid separately, and it is only steady perseverance, brick after brick, on the part of the bricklayer, which could have raised these great masses of work. Let me add that no one brick out of the many laid is of no importance. ”

“ Sun-dried brick, a material but little superior to the natural clay of which it was composed, constituted everywhere the actual fabric, which was then covered thinly and just screened from view by a facing, seldom more than a few inches in depth, of a more enduring and handsomer substance. ”

“ For the most part the brick building of that period was confined to the use of common brick for ordinary construction or for backing stone-faced walls. From that date, however, to the present, a growing taste has demanded and secured artistic effects in the brick wall by the use of specially manufactured face brick which, in a bewildering variety of beautiful color tones and textures, have been sympathetically and artistically treated by our leading architects, as may be seen all over our country. ”

“ Now tell me where I am to find the brick you designate.”
“It’s in the cellar wall, about half-way down on the right-hand side. You will see nothing but stone for a foot or two above the floor, but after that comes the brick wall. On one of these bricks you will detect a cross scratched. That’s the one. It will look as well cemented as the rest, but if you throw water against it, you will find that in a little while you will be able to pry it out. Take something to do this with, a knife or a pair of scissors. When the brick falls out, feel behind with your hand and you will find the box.” ”

“ We make the brick in six colors; viz., red, cream, buff, pink, brown, and gray: thus giving you the choice of a color which will harmonize with or contrast properly with any scheme of surrounding decoration. The sizes of many of the designs can be altered to fit a required space. In shipping the brick, we pack them carefully in sawdust, in barrels, and with every order we furnish an architect's scale drawing and directions, and any intelligent brick-mason can easily set the mantels up. ”

“ Here are whole beds of clay baked until they have taken on the color and character of hard-burned brick or unglazed pottery. The resonance of the dry fragments under the hammer or the wheels of our vehicle is precisely that of broken terra-cotta. Sometimes the top of the butte is bare and red; sometimes the whole mass, from top to bottom, has been burned, and at a distance seems like a brick-kiln fallen into ruin. ”

“ Brick, therefore, never should be used in large groups of buildings, where those groups are to form part of landscape scenery: two or three houses, partly shaded with trees, are all that can be admitted at once. There is no object more villainously destructive of natural beauty, than a large town, of very red brick, with very scarlet tiling, very tall chimneys, and very few trees ”

“ These are absolutely better in brick than in stone, because, as no thought and no taste are necessary in the man who carves them, it were better the human intellect should be as little as possible deadened by working upon them. The windows of S. Katharine, Lübeck, show how these moulded bricks may be used in conjunction with stone traceries, and with admirable effect, when compared with the attempts at tracery in brick which this and other churches here exhibit. ”

“ Even a well-burned, selected common brick, with proper bond treatment and mortar color, may be made attractive, but the endless variety of color tones and textures found in face brick give to the artistic sense of the builder an unlimited choice. ”

“ In estimating quantities of common brick for fireplaces, figure the portions projecting beyond the line of the wall, such as breast and ash pit, as if solid, that is, the number of brick for the surface multiplied by the number of tiers deep, and then deduct the number of bricks displaced by all flues and openings, face brick facing, and fire brick lining. ”

“ In an ordinary brick-earth, when more than 10 per cent. of iron is present, the clay is apt to burn bluish, however, and, in certain cases, almost black. With a smaller proportion of iron, and the application of intense heat, the same tint may result, and the brick become vitrified. ”

“ Brick is admirably adapted for the climate of England, and for the frequent manufacturing nuisances of English blue country: for the smoke, which makes marble look like charcoal, and stucco like mud, only renders brick less glaring in its colour ”

“ A variation of solid brick construction is the so-called hollow or vaulted wall in which the face and common brick are separated by a two-inch air space and bonded together by metal ties laid in the mortar joints at proper intervals. ”

“ A level course of long stone, running through a wall of small stones or brick, gives greater strength by binding the whole together. This has not always a good excuse for extending beyond the wall-face. But a projecting belt of brick adds nothing either in appearance or in reality. If horizontal lines are required to diminish the apparent height of the building or affect its proportions, make them of brick of different color from those of the main wall or laid in different position. Remember this; fanciful brick decorations are quite sure to look better on paper than when executed. ”

“ This is the bricklayer; hear the thud
Of his heavy load dumped down on stone.
His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking mortar whiter than bone.
Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;
Make my marvelous wall so thick
Dead nor living may shake its strength.
Full as a crystal cup with drink
Is my cell with dreams, and quiet, and cool....
Stop, old man! You must leave a chink;
How can I breathe? You can't, you fool! ”

“ Stone is far less easily dealt with than brick in this respect. Think for a moment of the great variety of walls, footings, piers, pilasters, openings, recesses, flues, chimney breasts, chimney shafts, vaults, arches, domes, fireproof floors, corbels, strings, cappings, panels, cornices, plinths, and other features met with in constant use, and all formed by the bricklayer with little trouble out of the one material--brickwork! ”

“ By my method instead of carrying the bricks to the mason we take the mason to the brick,—lower him on a wire rope, give him a brick, and up he goes again. As soon as he wants another brick he calls down, ‘I want a brick,’ and down he comes like lightning. ”

“ From the necessity for symmetrical buildings arose the invention of the brick, which must have superseded the rude plastering of the hut with clay, to protect it against the sun or storm. In the history of the Semitic nations the brick appears among the earliest inventions, and its use can be traced with various modifications, from the building of the Tower of Babel to the present day. It is essential that bricks should be symmetrical, and their form is generally rectangular. ”

“ The free use of metal ornaments, railings, for supporting signs, for down-pipes, &c., is unfortunate in not a few instances. At the point of junction between the metallic substance and the brick into which it is inserted, or in the immediate neighbourhood above which it is fastened, the brickwork is sure to be discoloured. ”

“ They are usually three stories high, with three more in the stepped gables, and the materials are generally brick with trimmings of cut stone, though wood was frequently used, particularly in Ypres, and always in the most consistent and joiner-like way. If there were no other test, you could always tell the work of a good period from that of a bad by the frankness in use of materials: brick is brick, stone is stone, and wood is wood, and there are no shams, imitations, or subterfuges anywhere. ”

“ It has been by far too much the fashion of late years to look upon brick as a very inferior material, fit only to be covered with compo, and never fit to be used in church-building, or indeed in any buildings of any architectural pretension, so that I suspect many people, trusting to their knowledge of pointed architecture in England, would be much surprized to find that, throughout large tracts of the Continent, brick was the natural, and indeed the popular material during the most palmy days of architecture in the Middle Ages. ”

“ Cleanliness, looks, beauty, have a very real value in dollars and cents. The same principle applies to a face brick finish of the wall surface. Face brick are made with more care, are handled and shipped with more care, and laid with more care, just for the purpose of producing a more attractive wall. When you use face brick for your clients, you give them the last word in wall construction, which is at once, as no other material, strong, enduring, comfortable, fire-safe, economical, and beautiful. ”

“ From the Euphrates, brickcraft spread eastward to Persia, India, and China, and westward to Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The Romans, who were the great builders of ancient times, made very extensive use of brick in their immense building operations, wherever good clay could be found. From the numerous monuments of Roman brickwork that still remain, the brick are seen to be of an excellent hard-burned quality, and generally of a large, flat, thin rectangular or triangular form. ”

“ In general, we have to consider whether the brick is strong enough for the purpose to which it is to be applied; and that depends much more on the manner in which it is built up, than on the strength of the105 individual brick. For ordinary building purposes almost any kind of brick is, per se, strong enough, and a mere inspection of the specimen suffices to carry conviction as to its suitability or otherwise in that respect. ”

“ Presumably the brick-setters will discard most of the unsuitable brick during the progress of their work, particularly if they are given to understand distinctly the defects that will cause rejection. ”

“ Construction of Brick Chimneys.—All brick stacks must be provided with a cast-iron or stone coping at the top, and it is usually well to tie them in toward the base with good heavy stone band courses. In constructing brick stacks, the brickwork should be laid up in lime-and-cement mortar, and the bricks well covered and slid in place, not just tapped or hit with the handle of a trowel. ”

“ From the ingenious way in which the bricks are joined it results, as everyone who ever seen it will at once remember, that on holding the uppermost brick in the hand and giving it an almost imperceptible tilting movement, an apparently endless series of bricks chase each other down the chain. ”

“ Or, it may be that your client concludes to build a thoroughly good solid brick wall, but wants to save 3 to 4 per cent on the total cost of the house by using common brick throughout. This will be a good wall, no doubt, but how will it look! Common brick are not made with an eye to external appearance; their great merit lies in solid structural value. Occasionally a well-burned selected common brick, made of a clay that burns to a good color may be found and used, with proper care of bond and mortar joint, for facing purposes ”