The Strength and Durability of Brick

From John the Architect: The Strength and Durability of Brick
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My dear John:

It is encouraging to know that my suggestions find some favor in your sight. Pray don't go too fast. It isn't well to make up our minds fully until we have heard all sides, lest we have them to unmake, which is always more or less painful.

Notwithstanding the peculiar merits of the stone walls, the coming house,--the house that is to embody all the comforts and amenities of civilized life,--the house of safe and economic construction, well warmed, well ventilated, defiant alike of flood, frosty and fire,--the millennial house, if you please, will doubtless be a brick one. Don't be alarmed. I know just what vision rises before your mind's eye as you read this. A huge square edifice; windows very high from the ground, not very large, square tops, frame and sash painted white; expressionless roof; flat, helpless chimneys perched upon the outer walls, the course of their flues showing in a crooked stain; at the back side a most humiliated-looking wooden attachment, somewhat unhinged as to its doors and out at the elbows as to its windows, evidently hiding behind the pile of brick and mortar that tries to look dignified and grand, but only succeeds in making a great red blot on the landscape; all the while you know the only homelike portion of the establishment is in the wooden rear part. The front rooms are dark and gloomy, the paper hangings are mouldy, the closets musty and damp; there is a combined smell of creosote and whitewash pervading the chambers, and the ceilings hang low. I don't wonder you object to a brick house in the country. Yet, if you propose to build a model, honest and permanent, a house that shall be worth what it costs and look as good as it is, I shall still recommend brick. The growing scarcity of wood, the usual costliness of stone, the abundance of clay, the rapidity with which brick can be made and used,--one season being sufficient to develop the most awkward hod-carrier into a four-dollars-a-day journeyman bricklayer,--the demand for more permanence in our domestic dwellings, and the known worth of brick in point of durability and safety,--all these reasons will, I think, cause a steady increase in their use. Hence it behooves us to study the matter carefully, and see whether any good thing can be done with them.

Since the time, long ago, when the aspiring sons of Noah said to one another, "Go to; let us make brick and burn them thoroughly," to the latest kiln in Hampden brick-yard, there seems to have been little variety in the making or using of them, except that among different nations they have assumed different forms. They are found as huge blocks a foot and a half square, and in little flinty cakes no bigger than a snuff-box. The Romans made the best ones, some of their buildings having defied the elements for seventeen centuries, and their mantle, as to brick making, has fallen upon the Dutch. They were found among the ancient Peruvians, and the Chinese made beautiful the outside of the temple by giving a porcelain finish to the brick. Still I fancy they have always been more famous for their use than for their beauty; but their utility is beyond all question. If our modern experience doesn't prove it, read this inscription from an ancient brick pyramid of Howara:--

"Do not undervalue me by comparing me with pyramids of stone; for I am better than they as Jove exceeds the other deities. I am made of bricks from clay, brought up from the bottom of the lake adhering to poles."

Notwithstanding these claims to veneration, there is but little poetry about them, and therefore, I suppose, but little progress. Compared with other materials, they have undergone slight changes with us, in color, shape, or modes of use. A block of wood or stone contains, in the eye of the artistic workman, every possible grace of form and moulding; but a brick is a square, red, uninteresting fact, and the laying of them the most prosaic of all work. By common consent we expect no improvement in their use, but rather sigh for the good old times when work was honestly done and the size of the brick prescribed by law. We associate them with factories, boarding-houses, steam-chimneys, pavements, sewers,--whatever is practical, commonplace, and undignified. Yet there are charming, even delicate, effects possible with these unpromising rectangular blocks.

In your efforts to unite beauty and brickwork it will be well to begin modestly, merely aiming to avoid positive ugliness. Do not feel bound to enclose your house by four straight unbroken walls,--brick are no more difficult to build in irregular shape than anything else,--and do not, on any account, make square-topped openings, as the builders of the old-fashioned brick houses were wont to do. Doubtless you have read Mr. Ruskin's vigorous protest against this particular architectural sin; if you have not, by all means do so, only he proves too much, and would fain make us believe that our doors and windows must not only be crowned by arches, but they must be Gothic arches,--doctrine to be received with some grains of allowance. A pointed Gothic arch may be, often is, very beautiful; but, applying our test of utility, it is most obviously out of place, and therefore inartistic, where close economy, convenience, and abundance of light are required. For the sake of strength, if for no other reason, let the top of the openings be arched, but a low arch of one arc or two is often preferable to a high one. If, for economy's sake, you wish to make the top of the sash square, do so, curving the upper portion of the frame as a sort of centre on which the masonry may rest; but do not attempt this if the openings are wide, and in any case relieve the wood segment by ornamental cutting or some other device, otherwise you will have a weak and poverty-stricken effect. Or you may use a straight lintel of stone, taking care to build a conspicuous, relieving arch above it of stone or colored brick. You will get the idea from the sketches, and see that there is room for endless variety of expression and ornament without violating any of the first principles, which you will do if you try to cover a square-headed opening with a "straight arch" of brick, or leave a light, horizontal stone cap without a protecting arch above it.


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