![\"(Clockwise](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/C202605-312-Five-Things-brick-styles.jpg\")
(Clockwise from top left): Brick from the 1880s, 1920s, 2020s, and 1980s. <\/p>\n1 Chicago-made bricks didn\u2019t win any beauty contests.<\/p>\n
In the 19th century, the common bricks produced here \u201cwere considered the ugliest bricks in the entire country,\u201d Will Quam writes in Fire and Clay: How Bricks Reveal the Hidden History of Chicago. Blame local clay, which is speckled with limestone and dolomite, leading to bricks with unpredictable color patterns. But Chicago still made a lot of them. Annual production peaked at 855 million in 1910. Their cheapness made them popular for utilitarian purposes, like lining \u201cthe guts, sides, and backs of buildings across the city,\u201d Quam notes.<\/p>\n
2 The city\u2019s most visible bricks came from other places.<\/p>\n
\u201cChicago imported all its face bricks, and more of them than any other city, save perhaps New York,\u201d writes Quam. And so the fronts of brick buildings here reveal the history of architectural fashions. Milwaukee\u2019s yellow Cream City bricks were popular in the mid-19th century, until St. Louis\u2019s \u201cperfect\u201d red bricks, as they were dubbed, got hot. In the 1920s, the lowly Chicago common finally gained acceptance as a face brick, adding \u201crustic appeal\u201d to North Shore mansions.<\/p>\n
3 Green laws doomed local brickyards.<\/p>\n
After the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, federal and state authorities cracked down on the already declining industry. \u201cThe burning of brick produced not only soot and smoke but also ozone and sulfur dioxide, compounds that were right in the EPA\u2019s crosshairs,\u201d Quam writes. The last Chicago commons were produced in 1982. And don\u2019t expect a renaissance here. As Quam explains, \u201cLand alone would cost a new manufacturer millions, before extracting any clay.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Clockwise from top left): Brick from the 1880s, 1920s, 2020s, and 1980s. <\/p>\n
4 Old Chicago commons are now a hot commodity.<\/p>\n
These timeworn building blocks are often salvaged from demolition sites. Homeowners in the South in particular seem to have an affinity for their weathered look. \u201cFrom Florida to Texas, buyers love how old-fashioned and stained Chicago commons are,\u201d Quam notes. \u201cThey import them in droves for projects of all types, from walkways to pool houses to villas.\u201d<\/p>\n
5 Modern mortar is undermining old brick.<\/p>\n
Over the years, the lime mortar in many Chicago buildings has been replaced with a cement-based version to try to stabilize them. But that has caused its own issues: \u201cThe mortar is just too strong and too fine for moisture to move through it, so it instead goes out through the bricks, pulling out salts and expanding into ice along the way, eating the brick apart,\u201d writes Quam. Minnekirken, a Logan Square church, reverted to lime mortar to head off disaster, using an Avondale masonry company\u2019s century-old family formulas. Many other brick buildings around town suffer from the same problems, \u201cbut not all of them can afford the level and scale of work that Minnekirken received,\u201d Quam laments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1 Chicago-made bricks didn\u2019t win any beauty contests. In the 19th century, the common bricks produced here \u201cwere…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":721311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[52912,96187,960,299239,299240,41834,11621,299241,299237,78403,723,299242,5386,1818,74080,6375,299243,405,38295,3948,23993,358,299238],"class_list":["post-721310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-avondale","tag-bricks","tag-chicago","tag-chicago-common-brick","tag-cream-city-bricks","tag-environmental-protection-agency","tag-epa","tag-face-brick","tag-fire-and-clay-how-bricks-reveal-the-hidden-history-of-chicago","tag-five-things","tag-florida","tag-green-laws","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-logan-square","tag-milwaukee","tag-minnekirken","tag-new-york","tag-north-shore","tag-south","tag-st-louis","tag-texas","tag-will-quam"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116388217017500689","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}