I walk in the same commercial area where the diamond wholesaler is, along with a caterer, therapeutic school, art gallery, teahouse, etc. And there in the middle of all this variety is a brick company! I know it sounds like something that should be on the outskirts of town with coal-fired furnaces, but apparently this location is the sales arm of the business. According to its website, Blackson Brick Co. is the largest brick distributor in Texas. Its bricks are featured in AT&T Stadium, Southlake Fire Department, Roanoke City Hall, Methodist Urgent Care and many more. If the houses I see on my daily walks are any indication, those made of brick are very popular. Let’s find out more about these little rectangles of sturdy protection.
History
Middle East and South Asia
According to Wikipedia, the earliest bricks were dried brick, meaning that they were formed from clay-bearing earth or mud and dried, usually in the sun, until they were strong enough for use. The oldest discovered bricks — originally made from shaped mud and dating before 7500 BC — were found at Tell Aswad in the upper Tigris region and in southeast Anatolia close to Diyarbakir. The South Asian inhabitants of Mehrgarh also constructed and lived in air-dried mudbrick houses between 7000–3300 BC. Other more recent findings, dated between 7000 and 6395 BC, come from Jericho, Catal Hüyük, the ancient Egyptian fortress of Buhen, and the ancient Indus Valley cities of Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and Mehrgarh. Ceramic or fired brick was used as early as 3000 BC in early Indus Valley cities like Kalibangan.
China
The earliest fired bricks appeared in Neolithic China around 4400 BC at Chengtoushan, a walled settlement of the Daxi culture. These bricks were made of red clay, fired on all sides to above 600 °C, and used as flooring for houses. By the Qujialing period in 3300 BC, fired bricks were being used to pave roads and as building foundations at Chengtoushan.
Bricks continued to be used during the 2nd millennium BC at a site near Xi’an. Fired bricks were found in Western Zhou (1046–771 BC) ruins, where they were produced on a large scale. The carpenter's manual Yingzao Fashi, published in 1103 at the time of the Song dynasty described the brick-making process and glazing techniques then in use. Using the 17th-century encyclopedic text Tiangong Kaiwu, historian Timothy Brook outlined the brick production process of Ming Dynasty China:
...the kilnmaster had to make sure that the temperature inside the kiln stayed at a level that caused the clay to shimmer with the color of molten gold or silver. He also had to know when to quench the kiln with water, so as to produce the surface glaze. To anonymous laborers fell the less skilled stages of brick production: mixing clay and water, driving oxen over the mixture to trample it into a thick paste, scooping the paste into standardized wooden frames to produce a brick roughly 42 cm long, 20 cm wide, and 10 cm thick, smoothing the surfaces with a wire-strung bow, removing them from the frames, printing the fronts and backs with stamps that indicated where the bricks came from and who made them, loading the kilns with fuel — likelier wood than coal, stacking the bricks in the kiln, removing them to cool while the kilns were still hot and bundling them into pallets for transportation. It was hot, filthy work.
Europe
Early civilizations around the Mediterranean adopted the use of fired bricks, including the Ancient Greeks and Romans. The Roman legions operated mobile kilns and built large brick structures throughout the Roman Empire, stamping the bricks with the seal of the legion.
During the Early Middle Ages the use of bricks in construction became popular in Northern Europe, after being introduced there from Northern-Western Italy. An independent style of brick architecture, known as brick Gothic — similar to Gothic architecture — flourished in places that lacked indigenous sources of rocks. Examples of this architectural style can be found in modern-day Denmark, Germany, Poland and Russia.
This style evolved into Brick Renaissance as the stylistic changes associated with the Italian Renaissance spread to northern Europe, leading to the adoption of Renaissance elements into brick-building. A clear distinction between the two styles only developed at the transition to Baroque architecture. In Lübeck, for example, Brick Renaissance is clearly recognizable in buildings equipped with terracotta reliefs by the artist Statius von Düren, who was also active at Schwerin (Schwerin Castle) and Wismar (Fürstenhof).
Long-distance bulk transport of bricks and other construction equipment remained prohibitively expensive until the development of modern transportation infrastructure, with the construction of canals, roads and railways.
Industrial era
Production of bricks increased massively with the onset of the Industrial Revolution and the rise in factory building in England. For reasons of speed and economy, bricks were increasingly preferred as building material to stone, even in areas where the stone was readily available. It was at this time in London that bright red brick was chosen for construction to make the buildings more visible in the heavy fog and to help prevent traffic accidents.
The transition from the traditional method of production known as hand-molding to a mechanized form of mass-production slowly took place during the first half of the 19th century. Possibly the first successful brick-making machine was patented by Henry Clayton, employed at the Atlas Works in Middlesex, England, in 1855, and was capable of producing up to 25,000 bricks daily with minimal supervision. His mechanical apparatus soon achieved widespread attention after it was adopted for use by the South Eastern Railway Co. for brick-making at their factory near Folkestone. The Bradley & Craven Ltd. Stiff-Plastic Brickmaking Machine was patented in 1853, apparently predating Clayton. Bradley & Craven went on to be a dominant manufacturer of brickmaking machinery. Predating both Clayton and Bradley & Craven Ltd., however, was the brick-making machine patented by Richard A. Ver Valen of Haverstraw, New York, in 1852.
The demand for high office building construction at the turn of the 20th century led to a much greater use of cast and wrought iron and later, steel and concrete. The use of brick for skyscraper construction severely limited the size of the building. The Monadnock Building, built in 1896 in Chicago, required exceptionally thick walls to maintain the structural integrity of its 17 stories.
Following pioneering work in the 1950s at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Building Research Establishment in Watford, UK, the use of improved masonry for the construction of tall structures up to 18 stories high was made viable. However, the use of brick has largely remained restricted to small to medium-sized buildings, as steel and concrete remain superior materials for high-rise construction.
Methods of manufacture
Three basic types of brick are un-fired, fired, and chemically set bricks. Each type is manufactured differently.
Mudbrick
Unfired bricks, also known as mudbricks, are made from a wet, clay-containing soil mixed with straw or similar binders. They are air-dried until ready for use.
Fired brick
Fired bricks are burned in a kiln which makes them durable. Modern, fired, clay bricks are formed in one of three processes – soft mud, dry press or extruded. Depending on the country, either the extruded or soft mud method is the most common, since they are the most economical.
Normally, bricks contain the following ingredients:
1. Silica (sand) – 50% to 60% by weight
2. Alumina (clay) – 20% to 30% by weight
3. Lime – 2 to 5% by weight
4. Iron oxide – ≤ 7% by weight
5. Magnesia – less than 1% by weight
Shaping methods
Three main methods are used for shaping the raw materials into bricks to be fired:
- Molded bricks – These bricks start with raw clay, preferably in a mix with 25–30% sand to reduce shrinkage. The clay is first ground and mixed with water to the desired consistency. The clay is then pressed into steel molds with a hydraulic press. The shaped clay is then fired at 900–1000 °C to achieve strength.
- Dry-pressed bricks – The dry-press method is similar to the soft-mud molded method, but starts with a much thicker clay mix, so it forms more accurate, sharper-edged bricks. The greater force in pressing and the longer burn make this method more expensive.
- Extruded bricks – For extruded bricks the clay is mixed with 10–15% water (stiff extrusion) or 20–25% water (soft extrusion) in a pugmill. This mixture is forced through a die to create a long cable of material of the desired width and depth. This mass is then cut into bricks of the desired length by a wall of wires. Most structural bricks are made by this method as it produces hard, dense bricks, and suitable dies can produce perforations as well. The introduction of such holes reduces the volume of clay needed, and hence the cost. Hollow bricks are lighter and easier to handle, and have different thermal properties from solid bricks. The cut bricks are hardened by drying for 20 to 40 hours at 50 to 150 °C before being fired. The heat for drying is often waste heat from the kiln.
Use
In the United States, bricks have been used for both buildings and pavements. Examples of brick use in buildings can be seen in colonial era buildings and other notable structures around the country. Bricks have been used in pavements especially during the late 19th century and early 20th century. The introduction of asphalt and concrete reduced the use of brick pavements, but they are still sometimes installed as a method of traffic calming or as a decorative surface in pedestrian precincts. For example, in the early 1900s, most of the streets in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, were paved with bricks. Today, there are only about 20 blocks of brick-paved streets remaining — totaling less than 0.5 percent of all the streets in the city limits. Much like in Grand Rapids, municipalities across the United States began replacing brick streets with inexpensive asphalt concrete by the mid-20th century.
Bricks in the metallurgy and glass industries are often used for lining furnaces, in particular refractory bricks such as silica, magnesia, chamotte and neutral refractory bricks. This type of brick must have good thermal shock resistance, refractoriness under load, high melting point, and satisfactory porosity. There is a large refractory brick industry, especially in the United Kingdom, Japan, United States, Belgium and the Netherlands.
In Northwest Europe, bricks have been used in construction for centuries. Until recently, almost all houses were built almost entirely from bricks. Although many houses are now built using a mixture of concrete blocks and other materials, many houses are skinned with a layer of bricks on the outside for aesthetic appeal.
Engineering bricks are used where strength, low water porosity or acid (flue gas) resistance are needed.
In the UK a red brick university is one founded in the late 19th or early 20th century. The term is used to refer to such institutions collectively to distinguish them from the older Oxbridge institutions and refers to the use of bricks — as opposed to stone — in their buildings.
Colombian architect Rogelio Salmona was noted for his extensive use of red bricks in his buildings and for using natural shapes like spirals, radial geometry and curves in his designs. Most buildings in Columbia are made of brick, given the abundance of clay in equatorial countries like this one.
Limitations
Starting in the 20th century, the use of brickwork declined in some areas due to concerns about earthquakes. Earthquakes such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the 1933 Long Beach earthquake revealed the weaknesses of unreinforced brick masonry in earthquake-prone areas. During seismic events, the mortar cracks and crumbles, so that the bricks are no longer held together. Brick masonry with steel reinforcement, which helps hold the masonry together during earthquakes, has been used to replace unreinforced bricks in many buildings. Retrofitting older unreinforced masonry structures has been mandated in many jurisdictions.
Brick Photo Gallery
The Church of St. Martin in Landshut is a medieval church in the German city located in the state of Bavaria. St. Martin's Church, along with Trausnitz Castle and the celebration of the Landshuter Hochzeit (wedding), are the most important landmarks and historical events of Landshut. This Brick Gothic landmark is the tallest church in Bavaria, and the tallest brick building as well as church in the world. It is also the second tallest brick structure in the world (after Anaconda Smelter Stack), made without steel supports. St. Martin's church has a height of 428 feet. It was completed in 1500.
The Chilehaus or Chile House is a ten-story office building in Hamburg, Germany. It is located in the Kontorhaus District. It is an exceptional example of the 1920s Brick Expressionism style of architecture. This large angular building is located on a site of approximately 6,000m², spanning the Fischertwiete Street in Hamburg. It was designed by the German architect Fritz Höger and finished in 1924.
St. Michael and All Angels Church was constructed from 1888 to 1891 of brick at the Blantyre Mission in Blantyre, Malawi. It is located on the original Scottish mission site, off Chileka Road and is in the Church of Central Afria, Presbyterian’s Blantyre Synod. Since 1991, it has been partnered with Hiland Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1885, Lieutenant H. E. O'Neil determined the longitude of Blantyre to be 2 hours 20 minutes 13.56 seconds east of Greenwich by means of a series of 365 sets of lunar observations, and a plaque installed in the side of the church commemorates this achievement. The church has been described as the first permanent Christian church erected between the Zambezi and the Nile.
The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon — in the area of present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq. It was constructed in about 575 BCE by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city. It was part of a grand walled processional way leading into the city. The walls were finished in glazed bricks mostly in blue, with animals and deities in low relief at intervals, these also made up of bricks that are molded and colored differently.
When German archaeologists excavated in Babylon in the 1930s, they dismantled the Ishtar Gate and packed it up to take with them to Berlin. It was meticulously reconstructed in the Pergamon Museum. The gate is 50 feet high, and the original foundations extended another 45 feet underground. The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon Museum is not a complete replica of the entire gate. The original structure was a double gate with a smaller frontal gate and a larger and more grandiose secondary posterior section. The only section on display in the Pergamon Museum is the smaller frontal segment.
Radzyń Castle
Radzyń Chełmiński is a town in Grudziadz County, Kuyavian-Pomranian Voivodeship, Poland, with 1,946 inhabitants as of 2004. The town contains the ruins of a medieval Ordensburg castle built by the Teutonic Knights.
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