Brick by Brick

By Jody Brumage

Archivist, Heritage Frederick

Brick has been a construction material of choice in Frederick County since the mid-18th century. Early brick production was a labor-intensive process involving digging and molding clay by hand and allowing it to dry before burning it in kilns. Brickyards were scattered throughout Frederick County, usually located near sources of clay. Benjamin F. Winchester built a large brickworks in the City of Frederick and supplied bricks for City Hall (now Brewer’s Alley) and the jail on West South Street (now the Frederick Rescue Mission).

In 1891, business leaders in Frederick formed a joint stock company to build a modern steam-powered brickworks. They hired Bonnot Brothers of Louisville, Ohio, to build the company’s new brickyards near the site of the former Winchester factory. The complex included two clay sheds, a brick storage shed with steam heat and four kilns, one of which can be seen in the background of this photograph of Frederick Brick Works employees taken by J. Davis Byerly.

On Aug. 31, 1891, the company delivered the first load of bricks to the building site of the Houck Mansion on North Market Street. Over the next 50 years, brick fired at the Brick Works were used to build houses, schools and businesses across Frederick County. City officials in Baltimore and Washington, D.C., used Frederick-fired bricks to build streets. The U.S. Government Printing Office signed one of the largest contracts in the company’s history: an order for 5 million “Frederick Reds.”

Changing economic conditions and labor shortages during World War II contributed to the suspension of brick manufacturing at the Brick Works in the late 1940s. The business shifted to retail building supplies, coal, sand and tools.